opening doors

Tim has only just grown tall enough to reach the door handle, but it seems that he's been studying how to operate it for some time. It took him only a couple of tries before he got it open.

car toy

Jenny bought Timothy a wonderful little remote control train, but it didn't work properly. I wasn't able to get another one; instead, I found something for him to have in the car. He loves it. It makes all kinds of car noises like turn signals and the horn and it has emergency vehicle sirens. The bad thing is that we're becoming immune to the siren noises and may miss a real cop!

happy birthday

Tim was one yesterday. We celebrated his birthday last week when Neville and Jenny were here. Mom and Jenny bought a cake and balloons, and we sang to him and offered him the whole cake and then, when he did nothing with that, just a slice to bury his little hands into. He wasn't very interested.





I think that having six adults standing around staring at him was a little intimidating. Stripping him down to his diaper in anticipation of the mess probably didn't help either. There were no tears, which is better than a lot of first birthday parties, and overall I think he enjoyed it.


The cake was very special as it had a photo of Tim on it. It's printed with food coloring for ink and sugar paper for paper. I don't think he even noticed. Wanting to stay away from nuts, chocolate and sugary sweet icing, they had the bakery make a plain white cake with whipped cream frosting. I look forward to next year when we can have a cake that tastes as good as it looks.





In a replay of Christmas, Tim's extended family once again loaded him with gifts. He doesn't seem to have a favorite yet.

Today, we had a little store bought spice cake for him and put a candle in the shape of a '1' on it. He didn't know what to do with the candle, but the wind blew it out for him. He ate a little more of this cake, and played with a lot more, but he still wasn't all that interested.



The weather was so glorious that we had cake outside.


never too early to start

mechanical cars

the hot dog van

the school bus

the hot dog van again

We went back to the playground at the mall today, but he wasn't interested in the climbing toys or the other kids. All he wanted to do was look at or get in the mechanical cars. Mom said it was the same when she took him last, but when he was in one and the two quarters were put in to start it up, he started to cry. I let him play on them for about twenty minutes today, until there were too many other kids with paying mothers who wanted to use them.

playground

We took Tim to a playground inside the mall. He was delighted with the other children and all of the equipment, which is all made of some kind of rubber, hard enough to hold shape but soft enough to work as shock absorbers.







Before this boy came along, Timothy had been playing with this alone. When he couldn't get to the slats, he figured out on his own to go to the back.