Exploring Our Neighborhood

Yesterday morning on our walk through the neighborhood, Jack, Shergar, and I saw three whitetail deer, just grazing in the woods a few hundred yards from our house. Surprisingly, Jack and Sherg were very quiet so we watched them for a while. On Saturday, Mick saw a few deer when he was walking Sherg and then we saw a few more that afternoon while taking a walk to the nearby playground. It's so strange to think that a month ago we had city buses and the occassional motorcade whizzing past our house and that now we have deer grazing so close by (yet are only 2 miles from downtown and the football stadium). I love both environments (and am really looking forward to Mick's and my upcoming weekend trip to DC!).

We had a nice weekend, still enjoying the unseasonably warm Michigan fall. I suspect this means we'll have a brutal winter but frankly, I cannot wait for snow. I had ten winters in DC where I sorely missed winter so I am excited to have a lot of good snow this winter. (I'm sure in April I will be moaning about the fact that it's still gray and that snowflakes are still falling...)

After watching (on TV) Michigan's sad, but not surprising, loss to Ohio State, the four of us took a walk to the elementary school that's just down the street. We tried out a new-to-us backpack carrier for Jack; he thought it was novel on the way there, but screamed and writhed when we tried to load him back in after playing at the playground.
Mick and Jack played for quite a while. From these pictures, you might wonder who had more fun between my two boys. I loved watching them.

We had Emily & Brian over Sunday evening for dinner, drinks, and conversation. Mick hand-crafted some delicious looking burgers for us. I say "delicious looking" instead of "delicious tasting" because we never ate them. While I was in the other room, Emily & Brian (who were seated at the table overlooking the back patio) suddenly gasped. One moment, they had seen Mick standing at the grill and the next moment, they saw huge flames erupt and a giant cloud of smoke... from which Mick emerged. The leg on the grill completely gave out which collapsed the whole thing and sent all of those yummy (but raw) burgers crashing to the ground. Mick was disappointed about those burgers but luckily we had back-up patties (store bought & nowhere near as good!) in the fridge. Really, once we realized Mick was okay, the whole thing was pretty funny.

Jack continues growing and is getting more and more verbal. Most of his words are still single words, though he does say "thank you" unprompted when we give him something (still working on "please"). He seems to add at least a word per day to his vocabulary, though as with most kids this age, only a few of us can tell what he's saying. During the move here, Mick's mum (who so generously spent the pre- and post-move with us and pretty much had full Jack duty during that time) noticed he was saying "gorilla" in response to a gorilla picture in one of his books. I didn't believe it until I heard it, but there's no mistaking it!

He's in a big "helper" phase right now and I'm taking full advantage of it while I can. I suspect that doing housework will one day lose its novelty for him. At the moment, he loves to help me swiffer (dry mop) the floors, dutst, open and close the microwave and press the start button, start my coffeemaker, raise and lower the blinds with me, take mail to and from the mailbox, and his favorite: feed Shergar. If he had his way, he would feed her ten times a day rather than just two. The best part about watching him feed her is that, before we fill her dish, I tell Shergar to sit and stay. Jack is very insistent that she stay, so he always holds his hand up to her and says "stay!" about five times before he finally decides to come and scoop out her food.

Two nights ago, I was making dinner while Jack and Shergar played "chase" around the house. For a while, Jack got really quiet (which should have suggested to me that something funny was going on) but I didn't pay much attention as he eventually came back to see me (I call this "returning to home base."). A few hours later, as we headed upstairs for Jack's bath and bedtime, I noticed what he was doing during the quiet time:
He apparently decided that the shoes should not be lined up on the rug inside our entry, but instead should be piled on a small table. I couldn't stop laughing.

We are headed up to my parents' house today and will spend the Thanksgiving weekend with them. We are having Thanksgiving dinner #1 at Andy & Sarah's tomorrow and then Thanksgiving dinner #2 in Big Rapids (with Trevor & Steph) on Saturday. We'll find out if Jack likes turkey!