It's been a little while since I just posted some pictures of the boys so you can see how much they've grown. As you can see, Matt has taken to little bouts of silly playing. He is also no longer our Two-Toothed Wonder, as his third tooth just popped out last night. And yes, he is still very blonde-blue-eyed.
Though winter had a few pluses, spring is a very much welcome development for us. Jon and I have taken to little 10-15 minute walks most evenings right before he goes to bed. We're lucky to live right next to some schools with lots of parks and fields and the like. He's also really gotten into playing on the baseball and football fields, no doubt the result of the Curious George books involving sports that we've been reading as of late.
At the end of our walk yesterday, we tried a little experiment. As usual, when I called him to go home, I got the usual excuses and pretending not to hear me. So I decided to test the limits of the Boy's independence - I just started walking home. Now of course, I wasn't about to leave him there alone a half mile from home, so I ducked behind a tree so he would think I had. After a 5-10 minute wait (he was much intrigued by the peculiar shape of some rocks), he finally realized that he was out on the baseball field all alone.
I expected some sort of emotional reaction; in fact, the whole experiment was to see which emotion would overcome him. To my great surprise, he instead just stood up, looked around a little, and started walking home. It wasn't until we were almost home that he saw my feet underneath an SUV (forgot to factor in that I was hiding from a two-year old who is only a couple of feet tall) and, with no fanfare whatsoever, he came up to meet me. As we walked the rest of the way home together, I realized that this was likely the first time in his life that he was completely alone and free to do what he pleased - or at he believed so. I was much pleased with the result.