The Lake, Take 2

Last night we let LR open Gigi's gift. He really got into ripping the paper off. He loved climbing on the box too, so as soon as he unwrapped it, Daddy shored up the box and gave it back to him for climbing. LR loved the animals and played with them a bunch today. In fact, he signed "fish" for the first time today. We've signed it to him so many times over the past year that I assumed he had decided that he didn't need to sign it back to us.

Today I decided to take the same path on our run. I thought I could just jog by the lake, but as I crested the hill, the lake came into view and LR squealed with excitement. Ok, glutton for punishment maybe, but I thought it would be cruel to skip it. So, we stopped at the shore and I let LR get out and play along to shoreline again. I still had to keep him from stepping into the water, but he did a slightly better job today. I gave him an LR-sized branch to play with hoping that he could stick it into the water and play without actually having to stand in the water the way he likes to when throwing mud and rocks. What helped more was that he was interested in digging with the shovel. He's never played with one before, but seemed to know exactly what to do with it. Scoop mud and throw, right?

A very messy 15 minutes later, I dragged him away from the water. More tears, but I took him through a small section of woods and into an open grassy field. (Learning from previous mistakes, I knew a few laps around the grass would solve the muddy shoes issue.) There was a small slope which he played on for a long time. He was practicing running up and down it. I would say "up, up, up, up, up!" and he would walk up the slope. Then I'd call "down, down, down," and he'd coming running back down. It's the first time I've seen him close to running. Like a nervous skier, when he'd start going too fast, he'd veer off to the side and point his toes uphill to stop the momentum. Sometimes he fell, but he definitely enjoyed it. I got this last picture of him as he wobbled down toward me. The blur in his hand is the magic yellow shovel from the other day.

Side note: It's a lake, not a pond as I wrote in the last post. It's the Lower Mystic Lake. Oh, and I love, love, love the last picture in this post.