Thanks to a couple months with his balance bike, Max skipped the training wheel stage entirely and went straight into two-wheeled locomotion. If there ever was a sign that our toddler is now a little boy, here it is:
Another sign he's making a real transition: We were riding around the park the other day. Max stops and says, "Let's go into the forest", pointing to the trees lining the path. Before I could even get over to him, he was climbing up this tree like a jaguar. He had never done that before, except one time last summer with his cousins, with me mostly lifting him into the tree. Here, he just shot up the thing by himself and before I knew it, he was 6 feet off the ground. A little scary, but the old dad was proud.
And here's a couple pics from our super fun trip to the Pacific Science Center ... alas, only had the lame camera phone:
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.
