We had a couple of warm days last week and enjoyed some time in the back yard. It was still a little muddy in spots, but for the most part, a great space for running, jumping, throwing balls, finding sticks, and a host of other wonders. You can see this tends to make a boy thirsty. The mud will certainly be with us for a while after about two inches of rain over the weekend left our yard looking like a lake in spots. More rain tonight. We didn't have as much snow this year, but people are still on edge worrying about flooding.

Daniel was doing pretty well with keeping the hat on. He tried pulling it off a couple of times, but was easily distracted into forgetting he was wearing it. We also made sure he saw that Ed was wearing his. It reminds me of teaching Ed to keep his hat on in his first summer "on the go" and it eventually became habit. It's a necessary fashion accessory for the thin of hair.

Inside, anything and everything can be made into a hat. For a few months now, since we took him to see a local country/folk/family band at a fundraiser, Ed has used the blue hat Daniel is wearing above as his "Mike Finders hat." (Mike was wearing a cowboy hat with a dangling chin string during the performance, so I guess this hat's strap is an acceptable substitute for Edward.) The first time I saw him take the arm cover for our couch and put it on his head I nearly fell over laughing. My sisters (and maybe my brother, but not sure he'll own up to it) used to do this all the time. We girls pretended it was long hair, since we were never allowed to keep our hair long. Sometimes they were veils, as we saw on the nuns in our elementary school. Ed hasn't specified any particular function, but still finds it all amusing.

You may recall Edward's snowplow preference. His latest distinction is based on the type of lights atop our local police cars. He noticed that some have "square" lights and some have "rectangle" and has registered a clear preference for square. In case you didn't know that there actually were different kinds of lights, I will attempt to describe. The "square" lights look like a series of individual lights in a row, or maybe a slight 'v' shape on top of the car. The "rectangle" lights are all in one bar across the top. Apparently this just ruins the aesthetic.

Yesterday in the 45 minutes between the end of dinner and bath time, Daniel stumbled or tumbled about six times. He's either in a growth spurt or has some sort of inner-ear imbalance thing going on. Some of these incidents are clearly a case of his overestimating his own physical prowess, such as when he stood on the step between the dining room and library and thought he could bend over from the waist and pick something up from the lower step. That resulted in a head-over-heels tumble down the two steps. Other times, he's just walking and either falls or crashes into something. Maybe it's a depth-perception thing...Hmmm. I guess we'll just watch and see. Maybe he'll get more coordinated with time. Lucky for him, most of his spills are easy to bounce back from. It's the rare one (like the steps) that result in lengthy consolation.

He's actually mastered the steps (with the rare exception noted above) so that we don't have to chase him down and body block when he's headed toward them. We still go with, but he now dutifully turns himself around (sometimes several feet before the edge of the step) and scoots down on his belly. This means we can keep the door open between the dining room and library for access to a full "loop." We do a lot of walking in circles now.

Daniel also has been "singing" a version of "Row, row, row your boat" to our endless amusement. Edward taught us all a new verse that is "Row, row, row your boat underneath the stream. Ha ha, fooled you! I'm a submarine!" If we start with "row row row" Daniel will chime in with "Ha ha ha" and then continue on his own "row row; ha ha ha!" and then clap for himself.

Oh, and a note for posterity: Daniel has given up his bottles. He had been down to just one a day, before bed, and drinking the rest of the time from sippy cups. After about a week of nightly soaking due to over-capacity overnight diapers, we decided that we had to cut this pre-bed liquid. He actually did fine with the transition (about two weeks ago)--a little crying and some extra snuggles on the first two nights, but now he has a paci while we read some stories and then goes to bed with little fuss. Yet another passageway from "baby" to "toddler." Now, what do I do with all the bottles?