stuff in the world

This past weekend we went to the Peabody Essex Museum for their Oshogatsu (Japanese New Year's Day) festival (Japan celebrates on January 1st, for those of you who don't know, but the PEM had their festival a bit late). Sam drew this afterwards so he could remember to tell Daddy everything he'd seen:



(There are lines connecting each illustration with numbers designating the order in which we saw them, but it's easier to explain starting at the top left and going clockwise: we saw paintings; we made a wood-block print of a tiger head; we watched a professional Japanese calligrapher; we painted a papier-mache daruma; we watched taiko drumming; and (in the center), we saw a very cool exhibit of animals made out of trash.)

Sam is very into cataloguing things with illustrations these days. Here's one showing a list of ways houses can catch on fire (among other things: lightning; a match; leaving the oven door open):



He also likes to document events, like this morning when he and I bumped heads and hurt my ear (that's me frowning and him looking serious, as he explained it):



The other night in the car on the way to meeting Uncle Dan and Aunt Sara for dinner, Sam was musing at length on what it will be like when he grows up. He thought that maybe he'll get married some day, and will have a baby. "If you want to, that will be nice," I said, and he replied, "No it won't! We'll have to have a construction site so we can build a new house, and we'll have to find a babysitter,..." I pointed out that they can live in a house that is already built, and then he said maybe he would like to live in an apartment building. And that he would like to live in New York City (not that he has been there, but ok). "Will you come visit me and Daddy?" I asked, and he said, "Of course!" "Oh good," I said, "I will like that." And he said, "I will visit lots! But not when you are very very old." "Really? Why not then?" I asked, and he didn't answer, and I said that then I would miss him, but he said that he would visit when we get sick, just like in Love You Forever, which I guess they'd read at school at some point recently (I frankly find this book weird, though I generally like Robert Munsch a lot). Ah, so that explains it. Anyway.

Bean is rolling very determinedly-- she traverses surprising stretches of floor, albeit not altogether intentionally, by rolling back and forth, flipping over and back and ending up spun 180 degrees and several feet from where she started. She sleeps on her tummy all the time now (like the rest of the family, for that matter) but we can't leave her on our bed because she even rolls in her sleep; time to switch out the cosleeper for the crib. She is also getting more and more interactive with the physical world. The other day she was hanging out in her bouncy seat in the kitchen while I was cooking dinner, and the big bouncy ball happened to be near her. She discovered to her chortling delight that it would roll back when she pushed it away, and spent quite some minutes engaged in pushing it and gleefully watching it roll back:



She adores Sam, lighting up and laughing aloud whenever he comes to entertain her, which is often. (He also likes to pick her up, and it's hard to explain to him why he can't do this without an adult spotting him-- which we do, obviously.) She's bonding well with our nanny, though she still only takes as much milk from bottles as she needs to in order to not be too hungry (just like her brother did at this age).

We added this monstrosity to our home last night, courtesy of Craig's List, where it will return the first moment she tires of it. (Why oh why must baby gear be so eye-stabbingly ugly? and this is with the light-blinking, music-playing toy on the front removed.) In the meantime, she is just barely figuring out how to jump in it, but I think once she catches on she will looooove it. As it is, she spends many happy minutes hanging out with her toes on the ground and various of her toys hooked onto the front:



And to end: the sign Sam made tonight to clarify his feelings about bedtime. With two exclamation points, because when I read the first one with just some emphasis he apparently decided it wasn't exclamatory enough: