Max loves riding the bus. He likes to sit in the back, look out at the window and chat with the people getting on and off. We recently took a trip to my work downtown on a Saturday, Max ran around my deserted office and we stopped in at Seattle's main library across the street to get some books about rockets. I snapped a couple photos down in the tunnel waiting for the bus back home (unfortunately, my phone takes bad pix.)
Ran across some pix of Max demonstrating his yoga poses for Grandma while we were in Houston for Christmas, so I put together this little clip. Namaste!
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.
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.
It's quite amusing the utterly random thoughts that flash into Max's in-perpetual-motion mind. This weekend, he busted out a couple doozies:
We were driving downtown to his friend Jonas' birthday party, listening to some tunes, not much talk and then Max very dramatically states:
"When I grow up, I'm going to buy some ice skates. Then I'm going to turn the streets into ice with a lighter and then I'm just going to skate everywhere."
When I told him a lighter would melt the ice and that he should use an ice machine instead, he said, "Yes, yes, of course, an ice machine, Daddy."
Then, on our return trip, as we were crossing the Aurora Bridge, he remarked about how were above the water and that it was moving beneath us. I affirmed his observation, and after a minute or two of silence, Max said:
"When I grow up, I'm going to buy a scuba suit and dive deep down into the water to see the monsters."
He's actually talked a few times before about getting a scuba suit, so maybe we have a young Jacques Cousteau in our midst.
Max's bursts of creative imagination are fun for mom and dad to hear. Oh yeah, and he's started doing somersaults and standing on his head, something he was deathly afraid of 6 months ago.
Whoa ... just realized it's been awhile since we updated this. The past couple months have flown by, with the holidays, our trip to Texas and getting back into the daily grind here. Daddy has been slammed at work too ... he needs another vacation already!
So here's a big photo dump from the past month, featuring some shots with Joi's new Nikon D60.
Here's an instant classic with Paw-Paw, Max and GJ:
Max has gotten into astronauts and spaceships ... so he got Buzz Lightyear for Christmas!
Max and Diego rockin' out.
Some shots at Paw-Paw and GJ's house in Texas.
Checking out a present from Grandma ...
Max also knows several yoga poses ... here's Warrior 2 at Grandma's house.
As we've mentioned before, Max is turning out to be quite a musician. Whenever I pick up my guitar, he picks up his and goes to strumming. He walks around singing all kinds of random songs, sometimes making up his own lyrics. Lately, he's gotten into the Beatles and he loves "Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da" and "Bungalow Bill". Whenever I come walking in from the bus and have my headphones on, he immediately wants to put them on listen and dance around. You can see he and I rockin' out below, and him getting his groove on to the Fab 4.
Another recent Max obsession: puzzles. He loves them. He'll sit and do 4 or 5 of them (the 24-piece kind) in a row. I help him a little, but he mostly does them "all by myself" ... as he likes to shout when he's done. One funny thing recently: His friend Diego was over for a playdate the other day and he and Max were doing a puzzle together. Joi said she heard Max telling Diego "So look, the ones with the straight edges go on the outside" and "Match up the colors" ... all the things I say to him when we do puzzles together. My little puzzle protege.
And he's also starting a typical boy phase: dinosaurs. He can point out the names of 8-10 different ones. Tonight at the dinner table, he told me that I was a triceratops and he was a spinosaurus. I'm not sure that at 3-years-old I knew what a spinosaurus was. He's really turning a corner ...
