Max hits the slopes

To this point, Max hasn't shown a ton of enthusiasm for the traditional sports (soccer, baseball, football, etc.) but he's crazy about more "alternative" sports like skating, biking and skiiing. He loves watching them on TV and when we see skaters around town. And he has pretty amazing balance for a big 3-year-old. He zips around on his Razor scooter, lifting his off leg way up in the air and zig-zagging around. We got him a balance bike (a bike with no pedals) and he tears around on that. He's always trying to "surf" any flat thing he finds on the ground.

This weekend, we went to a condo near Mt. Baker with some friends, and Max was out in the parking lot scooting around. Some young guys probably in their early 20s were messing around with a big pro-style mountain bike, hopping off stumps, jumping over logs, doing wheelies, making a scene. Max was fascinated. Totally unintimidated, he rode right over and just starting talking to these guys and told them he loved their cool bike, he showed them his bike and said that he was going to do those tricks when he gets older, and he started trying to do wheelies on his bike. The guys were clearly kinda taken aback by this gregarious little guy. One of them looked over at me and said, "You've got a burly little dude on your hands. Right on."

Right on, indeed.

And as we figured, Max totally loved skiing. After I had a great day boarding with Ravi, Max and mommy met me at the rope tow and Max was so excited, and he immediately took to it, even with the thin strap-on skis on his little snow boots, which don't offer much support. Can't wait to get him in some real boots, bindings and skis next year. After the first time down, he didn't want to hold my hand. If they hadn't shut down the place, he would have stayed another hour.

When I'm boarding and I see families skiing together, I get excited thinking about the day when we're all up there together, carving turns.

Following in dad's footsteps?

Max and Daddy have found a fun new spot to hang out: the music store. We've been making trips to Trading Musician and Kenneally Keys to bang on the drums, strum the mandolins and check out the cellos. Max seems really drawn to the violin for some reason and always wants to take one down and pull a bow across it. The man at KK yesterday was amazed at how many instruments Max knew the names of (he even knows the difference between a violin and viola.) One funny thing: He calls any electric guitar a "rock star!"At home, he loves to pull out my old trumpet and have a "marching band". The other day, he came home and found me playing my electric guitar with a looping effect and he ran and grabbed his drum and came in with a big smile and we had a little jam session. I can already imagine he and I forming a power duo in near future. At this point, I'd say Max is leaning more toward the artistic side than the athletic side, but you never know how he'll turn out. Maybe like dad, with a foot in both worlds.

He's also really learning and retaining alot of Spanish, he knows how to say and respond to "My name is Max", "How are you", "How old are you" and knows alot of random words like apple, walk, dog, etc. It's so true that they soak languages up at young ages like a sponge.

Here's some drumming pics, a shot of us sledding, Max by the hot dog man in Greenwood, and a leftover shot from our Texas trip.