Pop-up Peekaboo

Matthew created his own version of peekaboo today, using the end table as a hiding place. He'd crouch down behind it, and then pop up and smile (as I said, "Where's Matthew? There he is!") He did it a bunch of times, which is impressive because it must have been quite a leg workout.

James, meanwhile, likes to play the game of taking all the books off the other end table. (All the ones he can reach, anyhow -- fortunately the tables are big enough that we can put some things out of the babies' grasp, at least for now. But they seem to have an uncanny ability to reach things that are quite far away; looking at the length of their arms, we're not sure how they do it!)

And they both like to sit under the end tables and play. (When they do that, we say they're in "the clubhouse.")

We bought these end tables cheap from a guy on Craigslist to replace our glass-topped ones (even though it was thick and sturdy glass, it didn't seem like a good idea with two little boys who like to bang on things!). They're big, solid, and have rounded edges, just what we wanted. Definitely money well-spent!

One of the other things the boys have been enjoying lately is a three piece (triangle, circle, square) puzzle from Grandma. They haven't shown much interest in the puzzle aspect of it yet, but they love carrying the pieces around and putting the handles in their mouths.

As far as we can tell, James and Matthew like each other a lot, but having a brother has been a bit hazardous to James's health recently. Just in the past few days, Matthew has (at separate times) closed James's fingers in a cabinet door, fallen down on top of him, and knocked him over. None of it is on purpose, of course -- just a side effect of Mattie's occasional bull-in-a-china-shop approach.* Luckily James is quite resilient!

Mattie also needs a refresher course in "gentle", because (despite our reminders to be gentle) his patting has gotten a little too enthusiastic these days, both with the dog and with his brother. Surprisingly, James doesn't seem to mind when Matthew pats him on the head with what seems to me to be excessive force (and in fact, sometimes when I stop Mattie from doing it, James then pats his own head! Kind of funny!) He only gets upset when Mattie misses and hits him in the face, which fortunately doesn't happen often.


* On an episode of Mythbusters, they actually set up a fake china shop and let a bull loose to run around -- it was quite amazing that the bull was able to weave in and out of the aisles without breaking the china! So, this cliche isn't really as accurate as it should be.