Happy Summer

Today is the Summer Solstice, the first day of summer, which is also strangely called Midsummer. It's the longest day of the year and around our household, it's a bit of a holiday. Depending on who you read online, the solstice was at 7:26 or 8:26 AM EST.

In southern Michigan (for those of you living elsewhere) it's grey and rainy with occassional thunder and lightning. It's putting a tiny damper on my plans for the day but otherwise I say, "Let it rain!" As a die-hard gardener, rainy days are my day off, so to speak. Nature is running the hose today. Also, I read in Discover Magazine or some such place that studies show lightning storms are great for plants, something about charged ions. Drink it up, my pretties.

We're going to go downtown to the farmer's market and to have lunch with Matt and see his new office. But we're going to drive rather than take the bus. There's no rain cover for the stroller and way too many potentially soaking wet blocks between the market and the restaurant and the office. This is not a decision made lightly as anyone who has spent time in my little city can testify that public parking is almost nonexistant.

Mea culpa, I still need to update the photos. I offer no excuses and no promises that I'm going to do it by this weekend. But maybe.

Words I forgot to put on the list:
baby
uh oh

Here's some pictures from the summer solstice last year:





Hardly seems like the same kid. I remember being there and I remember that face but Zander is so much more...like Zander now...

Words

First, the pictures, from 6/7/06:





Now, the Words (these have all been said at least twice in proper context):
hi
mama
daddy
gramma
tessa
edith (our neighbor)
banana

On Deck - words we've overheard him working on:
zander
yes
diaper
doggie
cat

There are undoubtedly more words. He's learning and growing at lightning speed. Earlier this week we found he is pushing out two upper molars (so that's what Tuesday was all about!). Zander's current favorite game to play is patty-cake. He even starts clapping when he hears you say "patty-cake". He's also been sleeping a bit more than was usual. What an amazing little boy.

Leggo my LEGOs

I pulled out the LEGOs this afternoon. We have a small collection of hand-me-down superlarge LEGOs. Are those called Duplo or is that a separate brand all together. Just for kicks there are two other brands throw in. One is unlabeled but don't fit the LEGOs and the other are MegaBlocks. Just two or three of those.

Anyway. Zander, of course, loved the LEGOs. I put them together and he grabbed at them with an air of extreme excitement and threw them around his bedroom. It was kind of... maniacal, really. I think he got exicted by all the commotion of me dumping them on the floor. The crashing noise was so much fun it had to be replicated.

Well.

Then we found a LEGO car with a horn and, let me tell you, that boy likes to beep horns. There's this tricycle up the street.... the neighborhood kids will tell you about that sometime.

The weebeast stir-eth. I leave you with this photo:



(He was twirling the flower by it's stem... awww!)

Books

Zander is really into books. He went down for his afternoon nap with one yesterday - and when he woke up this morning - or called me to come get him, that is - he was looking at it again. Which is significant if you knew he has developed an attachment to one of his toys, a turtle named Rodney that Matt gave him for Hanukkah. But alas, Rodney just lay there, untouched and unloved.

Zander spends a good chunk of his play time pulling down his books and looking through them. Which is a step up from just pulling them down and walking all over them, wreaking the binding. They may be tough ol' board books and he may be only 20# but, well, nothing lasts forever, my friends.

Now for our pictorial interlude:

Zander the Mighty on 5/29/06

Storytime on 5/31/06

Box o' toys and clothes from Great Aunt Margie and Uncle Stephen on 6/1/06 - thank you!

"I can absorb nutrition through my head." 6/6/06

I very few pictures of Zander at Aunt Chrissi's graduation party and none of them are decent. The bloom's off the rose, I guess, because most of the pictures are of everyone else. Which is not a bad thing, except for this here blog.

Oh and we haven't forgotten to send out thank you cards for the birthday gifts. We just like to take our time here at Chez McLane. We eschew cheap store-bought thank you cards and all that creativity takes time.

Zander has a lot of words. I'm going to start cataloging them here. But that will have to wait for the next entry because all that picture sorting took a lot of time and I must get something else done this morning before el nino wakes up.