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One day when none of the toys seemed to be doing it, I decided to make little box "house" for the frog. When the box lies on its side (not pictured) the top flaps act like a door (I cut little holes for The Frog to stick his finger through to open the door) with a patio and roof :) I cut a window with "shutters" on one side, but I also cut some shapes on the other sides.

He seems to have a lot of fun looking through the holes and dropping toys through them, though I probably had more fun than he- nostalgia. I used to love building all kinds of things out of boxes as a kid.

We had the Taylors over for dinner on Sunday to bid them farewell before their journey to Virginia for law school. Their son Caleb was born the day after The Frog and so we've dubbed them good friends since we (the moms) like to go for walks together and occasionally our whole families would get together for games.

It was really fun watching our little men play together. We're really going to miss them!


Whenever I bake various breads, I try to only grind enough wheat for my current project, since a lot of the nutrients/vitamins are lost as time goes on ("They" say after 72 hours it's not much better for you than white flour, but I really haven't done any research and don't really understand why that would be the case, so don't quote me). Because of my many mini-batches, as opposed to one large one, I bring out the wheat grinder fairly frequently. It's so loud that it makes The Frog cry, so I've grown accustomed to putting it in the garage. However, now The Frog wants to go out there with me. I've discovered the solution is to put these ear muffs on to deaden the sound, and then The Frog can enjoy watching the process. Isn't he cute?

I decided it was time to teach The Frog about the ultimate childhood pastime:
bubbles.
He thought they were pretty interesting (though he could never seem to catch them) and since pretty much the only "trick" we can get him to do on command is blowing, I thought maybe I could get him to blow his own.
Nope.
He just really wanted to taste the wand! So this is how our bubble excursion ended, him dragging the wand around through the muck and eating dirt.

Daddy came home to rescue him from getting too many minerals...

I had a "Day Family Reunion" on Monday and thought I would show off my family tree. That's right, this shows up every time so new family members (i.e. The Frog) can get their leaf added to the tree. We're on the Clinton branch.

We had a little picnic dinner at the reunion and The Frog had a blast crawling around, exploring the cooler, gnawing on radishes through a plastic bag etc. and occasionally, coming back to me to get a bite of dinner.

For some reason I thought maybe The Frog was ready to learn about coloring. Didn't want to use crayons or pencils because he bites EVERYTHING (including me) and has been seen taking chunks of wood off of building blocks, so I thought washable markers were the way to go (especially since he loves dumping the basket and depositing them to all locations around the house). He seemed interested when I made the "magic lines" appear, but as soon as I let him go at it, he really wanted to taste the tip. The combination of his will and mine turned into this:

I really loved this one because he almost looks like he's mad at the marker for doing this to him. (Plus it illustrates one of his new ubiquitous talents- nose scrunching)