On good days Zachary has a wake-up routine. He begins by chattering to himself quietly as he rolls around pushing his legs out and running his feet between the rungs of the crib. After a few minutes of this rolling, he moves towards the end of the crib where his noise maker and dresser are located. Often times we don’t know he is up until we hear music coming from the monitor. It’s his music, in fact, because we can see right on camera that he is pushing the buttons on the noise maker causing it to restart the music over and over and over. It’s really fun to watch him do this because he explores everything. Even though its the same crib, the same noise maker, and the same dresser, he slowly and methodically explores each item each time. After starting his music maker Zach stands up and begins tapping his hands on the dresser. By this point Adam is usually up and if not, an explosion will soon follow anyway so we go in to get him. When Zach is in a calm and gentle state like this we are greeted by an enthusiastic smile and arms that reach out above his head.
Adam’s been into hats lately. We’ve always had hats for the boys, some for sun protection, others, like their Red Sox hats, for novelty. I myself have never been much of a hat person. I never played sports so I’m not used to them and I usually style my hair so a hat would ruin it. Regardless I do own a hat or two that I wear on occasion. I’ve been wondering if either of the boys would take a liking to them at all. For the past week Adam has insisted on wearing a hat. Each morning he wore his Red Sox cap during the car ride to day care. He even wears it around the house looking like a little baseball player walking around. He’ll take it off and hold it out to you to let you know that he wants you to put it back on. On and off, on and off. He even likes his floppy old-man-looking sun hat so much that he refused to take it off today. I think this one is going to be a hat kid.
We try to read to the boys a few times a week if we have time. We used to do it for bed time but it only worked for Adam; Zach would just get restless. Lately though Zach has taken a liking to books. We started reading City Dog Country Frog to him a few weeks ago and he immediately took a liking to it, pointing to the dog on every page and exclaiming “Dog Dog!” each time. He requests it every night at bedtime by pointing to it and saying “Dog Dog.” We find it quite adorable and now he’s extended it to the living room. We have four or five books laying around, some with dogs, some without. Zach will pick one up, walk over to you, sit on your lap, and hand you the book. On each page he will look for dogs to point out and if there aren’t any, he’ll say “dog dog” quietly as if he’s looking for them. I’m pretty sure I read three books to him today in this fashion. Our little boy loves his dogs.
Relatively Ambitious 