Such a helpful baby. On Wednesdays, I leave my baby at “Nanda”’s house (Barbara and Jack) while I go help out at Ted’s in the morning. I come back, only to see my baby slaving away in the front yard, helping dig holes for their new trees. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t slaving away, maybe he was in fact his efforts were counterproductive to the plan for the day, but he was cute, digging up the topsoil and moving it into the rocks. I’m not sure who he means by ‘Nanda’, but sometimes he says ‘Nanda-pa’, which I think would be a reference to Jack. But then, sometimes, he says Nanda, and I’m sure he’s referring to Jack. But then he tells me “Call Nanda”, and that would be Barbara. This may be the day where we attempted to trim his hair, where we did a very good job, considering. Considering that the baby was on Grandma’s lap, I had the clippers, and Jack was standing behind the baby holding the comb that we were using to ‘measure’ length. It did come out very well, considering.

Crackers in bed. In the afternoons while the baby naps, I spend the time quietly on my laptop in bed. The baby wakes up, and depending on circumstances, he will sometimes come up the stairs and crawl in next to me. This day, he brought up crackers. He also likes the camera. (And if you notice, there is marginally less hair in his eyes.)

I’m not sure why, but Alex likes crawling into hampers. With our family’s disposition toward doing laundry, this provides many opportunities for him to play in our hamper forests. This day, he brought one into ‘his room’ (the only regular visits to the room are to the closet where his clothes (the ones not in hampers) reside and the cat each morning that she is exiled from the family bed for being pesky. Anyways, he was climbing on the hamper, and crawling into the hamper. He also likes ordering the cat around, whether it’s “Go Downstairs” or “Caira Sit Down!” (as in this case, probably), or “Caira Go in There”, the cat’s reaction is usually the same. Here he is pushing on her, I think trying to convince her to go into the hamper cage with him.

We took him to Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, along with half of the beach toys sold at Target. (I sort of go overboard, I think, when it comes to indulging the baby.) He has a water bucket, which he promptly filled with moist sand, and became rather useless as either a watering device or a toy. But he’s two, I’m giving him some slack. He also pitched a Royal Fit when it was time to change into swim shorts – so I gave up after about 15 minutes and let him wear his jean shorts. I know for later times to not let the situation escalate to that point, but I guess there’s a first time where we learn.

In addition to sand, Moonlight Beach has a runoff creek, which I remember playing in as a child. Back in the days before they put up signs saying to keep out, that any contact with the water would lead to horrible illnesses. But the baby really liked the little river, and luckily nothing bad came of it. The beach also has the very best playground for toddlers that I’ve ever seen, and it had probably fifty or so kids Alex’s age, all well-behaved with attentive, polite parents tending.

He has a few bath toys. Most of them are shown in this picture. And he does like the repurposed ones just as much as the toy-on-purpose ones, but it doesn’t seem to stop me from getting more for him. Oh, and he likes taking deep baths. With bubbles. Oh, the calamity when we ran out of bubble bath bubbles! Does he get clean in the baths? Not so much. But he has a good time. Once he’s potty trained, he’ll take his baths in his tub instead of mine, which will enable me to take baths and feel like an adult, not surrounded by neon green dinosaurs, stop signs, and floaty squirty Thomas the Tank engine toys. We also have a big bin meant as a storage receptacle for the bath toys (I use those Rubbermaid bins for EVERYTHING), which spends a fair amount of time in the tub as a toy as well.

Alex in one of the many toy-receptacle bins. I know the label on these reads something like “This is not a toy”, but really, they all are. Alex is still in diapers at this point – I think that I will wait until he’s 2 ½ before attempting. But he does like sitting on the training toilet we bought, and he’ll sit there saying “Go poo!” (and then he does within a few minutes). So maybe he’ll ‘train’ sooner rather than later.

The Train and San Juan Capistrano. Alex had his first trip on the train this day, and after his initial apprehension, gave all appearances of enjoying himself. Here's Grandpa showing Alex how fun and exciting a train can be.

He had a morning snack of YoBaby and Coldberries (blueberries) of which he had no interest in sharing with Grandma. It's sort of cute, at this stage. Not to mention, his interest in being cute and adorable for the camera was warring with his desire to protect his coldberries from the marauding adult.

Look, a speeding train! He did enjoy the train trip, although I'm not sure if he realized he was on the train. And then, after lunch (El Adobe, of course!) he played in the and around the fountain until grandparents were finished eating.

At the beautiful mission in San Juan Capistrano, Alex enjoyed the interpretive signs (in a way they were probably not meant to be enjoyed, as well as climbing the trees on the grounds. (I only let him climb around on the trees in the green lawn area where they were setting up for a party. It's nice to see trees that aren't graffiti'd with initials and such.)

And after spending a bit of time at the mission, he was ready to go home. (Well, and it was nap time.) So he fell asleep on our lap for the train ride back to Oceanside, and was refreshed and cheery for the long trek from Oceanside to Escondido where the train let us off.