Luke Photo Overload

by Blinkies by Otto

I think the title says it all. Hey, don't roll your eyes! I haven't posted any in a couple of months. And sadly, we have become slack parents and not taken a *single* REAL photograph (digital, of course, but with the real 4MP 10x zoom camera) of our child since Christmas, though my parents have taken lots when they have visited. Instead, I've been snapping spontaneous shots with my camera phone when we've been out at various places. Most of the time, had I known we'd be doing such things, I definitely would have taken my real camera, but it was all spur of the moment. But I now understand the camera phone thing! It was made for parents like me who find themselves thinking "what I wouldn't give for a camera right now!" Well, now I have one. Still learning how to use it (note to self, *don't* use zoom; makes photos super blurry due to increased shutter time), but overall, worth having the shot over not. Hope you enjoy!



Let us start with Luke's first visit to a playground. McDonald's Playland no less! He was so excited to be around the other kids. I feel rather guilty now that it is such a rare occurrence for him. I wish I could provide more child-interaction opportunities for him. I'm working on it. And sadly, I am pretty much convinced that this very first interaction with other germy children and rarely-sanitized playground items is what lead to the baby virus. (Don't worry, I will *never* allow him in one of those ball pit things; way too many horror stories.) I can also tell you that this experience taught me what is going to be the hardest thing for me personally to handle: kids being kids. It was all I could do to keep from shredding a six year old who pushed him out of the way. Granted, I did say (very nicely) to her that she shouldn't push other kids, especially those so much smaller, but the Mama Bear in me wanted to smack her. How DARE you push my child!!! Especially when he wasn't in your way! (growls fiercely and bares teeth) Ah well, I guess I can't keep him away from kids (and germs) forever. At least he had fun, right?



Next up, we have Luke's first ever experience on a slide. Yes, there were slides at McD's, but he didn't use them. You had to climb through the labyrinth to get to them (reminded me of elaborate gerbil tunnels), and he was just too small. (He didn't show any interest in climbing in, and I didn't encourage him; he stayed in that little open room you see playing with the abacus thingy the entire time, which was fine by me.) We took him to a new mall a week or so later, and they had a little padded play area in the middle. Ironically enough, just a few days prior, we had seen a segment on Unwrapped about a company who makes soft food-shaped playground-type items for malls and such, and we said "too bad we don't have one of those around here." Well, we do, at this new mall we hadn't been to yet. We'd been to eat at the restaurants around there before, several times in fact, we'd just never bothered to go in until that day. (Too bad it's so far away.) The play area wasn't as big as the one we saw on TV, but that's okay (and this one was surrounded by padded benches for parents, too!). Anyway, there were only a couple of other kids there, fairly near his age, so we just let him play. He didn't want to go down the slide facing forward, but he loved going down. Based on his reaction to various baby-tossing and "dropping" type games DH plays with him, I definitely think we have a roller coaster junkie on our hands. Yay for me! (DH hates them.)



And lastly, these were taken just this week at Toys 'R Us. We have discovered that it is actually a pretty safe place to let him run around unrestrained (obviously, we don't go when they are busy). He discovers all kinds of things. Let's see, he loves to stack and unstack chairs (and cups, and boxes, and most anything else), he doesn't like rocking horses or push cars (the kind you sit on and push with your feet), and he loves balls (the bigger, the better, as in beach ball size). While we were there this week, he found these canisters, demonstrating his "World Strongest Baby" abilities. I don't even remember what they had in them (seems like fake food or something), but he carried and stacked and unstacked them for about 20 minutes. He could not, for the life of him, figure out how to stack all three of them on top of one another.



He just wasn't quite tall enough to hold the third one by the handle and get it on top without knocking off the second one. I literally watched him try every permutation of lower canisters to see if one would work better: red on blue, blue on red, yellow on blue, blue on yellow, yellow on red, red on yellow. I was rather impressed with his reasoning skills and memory on that one; it was fascinating! Once DH showed him to hold the third one by the sides, he did just fine, and he was so proud of himself (too bad I missed the photo!).

Currently feeling: proud