Relaxing

Things are finally starting to settle down here (a little bit) and when the weather is nice Monkey likes to 'relax'. It's kind of like planking but not as extreme.

Dance Your Legs

Monkey very much enjoys music and plays the piano, harmonica and drum with much enthusiasm and frequency. We also just completed a six week singing class through our local children's choir with some of Mrs. Z's friends and their own little 'animals' that Monkey very much enjoyed. Typically, he spent most of the class time exploring the room, trying to play their pianos and, our favorite, standing directly in front of the instructor and scowling at her. Thankfully Ms. L did not object to his scrutiny and understood that he prefers to watch and analyze before he is ready to participate. He was very focused and on task any time drums or jumping were involved. We did see a dramatic increase in singing here at home though, and he really loved learning new songs and games. If enough people sign up, we will be doing another six week session over the summer which we are really looking forward to. Lately he has been asking all about guitars: playing guitars, having guitars, Aunt B's guitar... so we will see what the birthday fairies bring. ;)

We have actually been taking short videos of Monkey for the past... year or whatever... since we last posted a video. But it is becoming quite clear that actually editing and making those videos presentable is not a realistic goal here in the zoo under our present conditions. So here are two completely unedited and raw piece of video from a few weeks back. You can see that Monkey has a solid command of the English language as a tool to command others; and no, we do not generally condone tossing musical instruments but we make exceptions for certain harmonicas. (Ha ha, just kidding.) (Sort of.) Someone (who shall remain nameless, but they know who they are) taught him to stamp his foot while he plays the "bouncy song" (video 1) on the harmonica, which he interprets as "dancing your legs" (video 2).

Easter Sunday

Hope you all had a happy and sunny Easter holiday.

Easter Egg Hunt

Today we had an Easter egg hunt at Grandma and Grandpa T's house. Cousin hilarity was the order of the day. There was much discussion of Monkey's recent line of inquiry: Where is the Easter Bunny? I explained how the Easter Bunny was like Santa Claus, who only comes on one night and lives at the North Pole the rest of the year. He did not believe that the Easter Bunny was living in his rabbit hole, and also questioned that Santa Claus could only come one night a year. In the end, no one was fully satisfied with any explanations, and we agreed to disagree on the subject. Monkey does, however, fully support baskets full of candy and toys, which he is eagerly anticipating in the morning.

Hope the Easter Bunny brings you a basket of good things!

Marble's Kids Museum

On our last full day of Spring Break (lo, so many moons ago)we went into Raleigh to visit their Children's Museum. Of course, we are a little bit spoiled by the CM here so we were trying to keep our expectations in line. We were pleasantly surprised by how affordable and nice it was. Smaller than ours, of course, but lots of good exhibits and a HUGE Thomas train table! Monkey had a fantastic time.
After playing hard at the museum, we walked down the block and had our lunch outside at a lovely little Irish pub. Because nothing says 'Happy St. Paddy's Day!' like pita and hummus:

Spring Break Part III

Mrs. Z took all these pictures with her phone and her new photo app (Picplz) so please forgive all the funny processing. We spent the morning at the beach and had a bike ride in the afternoon, followed by dinner on the pier. It was quite a big day, and Monkey didn't quite make it all the way through - about 20 minutes into our bike ride he said he needed "to take a little rest" and spent the next 90 or so minutes bobbing his head on the back of Mr. Z's bike.

Spring Break Part II

So, I know you were promised beach pictures. But the first day we were there it was too cold for the beach, and so we went to a battleship instead. Oops! So beach pictures tomorrow.

In case you are in need of a dangerous jungle gym that can also shoot planes from the sky and kill people on islands, we recommend the USS North Carolina.