Exploring and building

It's been really fun to watch Caden learning and talking about his world over the past few weeks. His running commentary of babbles has been replaced with comments on all of the things he is seeing or has seen recently. Today's favorites included blocks, the bus, trains, our friend Mark, seastars, and the Y. That about sums up the past couple of weeks!

Two weekends ago was the annual Marine Science Center open house, and Caden had a great time exploring the beach, splashing in the water, playing with the seastars and hermit crabs, and seeing the huge fin whale skeleton in the Museum of Vertebrate Studies. Caden's comment: "Whale... all done." Several of Caden's friends were there, and he had fun playing with Chelsea, Summer, and Mae.

We joined the local YMCA a couple of weeks ago. Caden goes to the YMCA preschool and needs to be a member anyway, so we got a family membership. That means that Mommy and Daddy are finally working out again. Caden looks forward to going to the Y because they have lots of books and fun toys there. Caden starts repeating "Y ... book, book, toyeee" over and over as soon as he hears that we're headed that way. He also often asks for "peeta," since a family membership also gets us free entry to kids' night on Fridays, including free pizza and access to the gymnastics facility. We met our friends Chelsea and Heidi there on Friday, and Caden had a great time climbing on the mats and other gymnastics equipment.

On Saturday, our friends Mark and Anne drove over from Vermont. We had fun walking along the Swampscott and Lynn waterfront, playing games, eating good food, and venturing into Boston on Sunday. Caden won a family membership to the New England Aquarium at the MSC open house, so our first stop after arriving downtown was at the aquarium to validate our membership and visit the harbor seals. Before heading inside, we went across the street for a tasty lunch at Legal Seafoods, where Caden slurped up a good bit of Daddy's clam chowdah. Caden loved the big fish tank at the aquarium. He said "whoa!" when the big sharks and tarpon swam by, "whee" as the smaller fish zipped past, and kept up a running commentary that went something like "turtle ... shark, shark ... seastar ... fish, fish ... wow!"

With Heidi and Chelsea at the MSC

Playing on the beach

More block stacking!