Let's go to the beach

(intro ominous music) Levi. has learned to climb up and down stairs.

I love watching how his little mind works to figure things out. He's made the decision to climb up our stairs before if I ran upstairs to do something - he tried to follow me a couple of times. Then the gates came out.

But he mostly stays downstairs. He's not sure what to do or how to get down from the bottom step or the hearth, and he doesn't like getting stuck anywhere.

Doing laundry with mommy

However. Yesterday, in preparation for the heat-wave coming our way for the rest of this week, I was outside weeding while he stood next to me playing with our mulch. After about 45 minutes, he got bored and crawled back up the walkway to our back stoop, which has three concrete steps leading up to the door. he proceeded to climb the steps as I walked toward him. He sat on the top step and crowed for a minute, and then tried to get down - feet first, backwards, as he should, though its not something he's ever figured out before. He climbed right back up and then tried to come down a different way - head and hands first, but he got stuck between the first two steps. I picked him up and put him back on the top step with his feet facing backward. Levi then spend the next several minutes climbing up and down and up and down. I eventually got tired of standing next to him and I couldn't weed several yards away with him playing on the concrete, so we went inside to play instead.

Stealing mommies cookies

Levi has also started making Indian noises. I don't really know what else to call them - that's what we called them when I was in kindergarten. You make an "ahhh" sound and put your flat hand over your mouth over and over again to make the sound vibrate. He does that regularly now, and giggles at himself.

Still no walking yet. He had a couple of falls while practicing taking steps by himself on our hardwood floors, and now he's very careful to always hold onto something if he's trying to move.

Levi also has a new love of pillows. He'll play on our bed for ages while I'm getting ready for job interviews or networking meetings, just in a circle of pillows, falling on one after the other of them and laughing uproariously.

He's also becoming more frustrated and stubborn. Not that I can talk :) he has little tantrums when he can't get what he wants. If its just something he's not sure how to get because he's too little or can't figure it out, I tell him to have patience while I help him. If it's something he wants and knows he can't have, I put him on the floor to kick and scream until he's finished and will behave again. I don't have time to try to calm a nonsensical child down while they're trying to take out one of my eyes :)

But those aren't all the things Levi has been up to. While I've been out of work, we had some beautiful timing with one of Tim's cousins bringing her family over from England to visit for two weeks - with six year old and three year old daughters.

We started a few weeks ago by having a lovely picnic in the park near Tim's sister's house, and then heading out for some home-made ice cream at Lapp Valley Farm. We spent some time at a local baseball game, where it commenced to pour and soak some of us through and through. Levi liked helping to hold the umbrella up :) We went strawberry picking with our neighbors, Joelyn and her son Kai who's about 19 months old. Levi sat next to me and ate berries and then put the bits he didn't eat into a my bucket. and then he started crawling up and down the little aisles looking for more :)

At the beach!

We also headed out to New Jersey for a wedding I was in, and Levi got to spend some time with his great grandma, my aunt and my sister. The next day we headed to the beach where Levi enjoyed playing in the waves and the water, as we slathered him with sunscreen over and over again.

Then we headed up to New England for the week, spending a couple of days with Tim's fam and then a couple with mine. At Tim's parent's house we had a birthday party for his cousin Micah, who turned three. We spent some time out on Papa's boat, where Levi either slept or tried to get out of his life jacket. We also headed to the little beach on a lake up in New Hampshire, and spent more time in the water, played some mini golf where Levi crawled around and tried to put people's golf balls in the holes instead of letting them play. At my parent's house, he learned how to handle being in the same room as their puppy, Jack, and spent a day driving around the coast of Rhode Island. We had yummy Italian food, walked around the state park, saw some glass being blown and spent some time climbing on rocks outside of a light house. He actually got a little cut on his knee from all the rock climbing to play in some pools of water, ah boy children.

And now we're back home. I think by the time. we made it back home after a week and a day or so, Levi was super excited to just stay in one place. Whenever we run an errand and come home he gets all excited, kicking and waving his arms.