We've been going to lots of playgrounds. Since TongJie loves going down slides all by himself now, it's been lots of fun. Just about every time we go anywhere, either walking or riding in the car, TongJie asks "slide?" He even notices when we drive by parks, and we can hear him saying "Slide! Slide!" from the back seat.
He's been having fun on the swings, and even started swinging (very carefully) on the big swings. He still likes the baby swings too.
Jeff helped him on the monkey bars and he thought that was great.
The Apple Blossom youth parade was on Saturday, and Jeff's band marched in it so we went to watch.
TongJie got his very own fireman hat at the parade and he thought that was pretty neat.
He even liked it enough to have it with him while drinking his before-bed bottle of milk.
Speaking of hats, I made TongJie a fedora hat. There's a free pattern here if you're interested in making a toddler-sized fedora. After giving it a shot, I've come to the conclusion that 1) this type of hat is really hard to make and have it look not homemade, 2) I shouldn't have used a fabric with stripes because it makes it really obvious where it's not lined up, and 3) TongJie doesn't really like to wear hats for more than about two seconds at a time so it's a good thing that it's quite big on him still so maybe he'll want to wear it when he gets a little older. Quite the fashion statement, though!
After picking a bouquet of flowers from our yard the other day with TongJie, he has been wanting to pick every flower that he sees.
I took the changing table out of TongJie's room one morning last week because we weren't really using it anymore, except for storing things. So I rearranged some things in his room and got rid of some stuff that we weren't using in there. As soon as I took off the pad from the changing table and set it on the floor, TongJie went right over to it and laid down. He's grown a lot since the time that we first started using it almost a year ago!
Here's another funny picture, first with an explanation. We recently had ketchup and taught TongJie how he could dip things into it. Well, he must have really liked it because he dipped everything into his ketchup, including his grapes. Or maybe he just liked the idea of dipping. Then he wanted to drink the ketchup. Ever since then, he's been trying to dip his food into whatever he can, usually his cup of water or milk. After his nap the other day, he was eating a snack of seaweed (which he loves) and milk, and dipping the seaweed into his milk. I thought it looked kind of gross, but he seemed to like it, as you can see from the picture.
He's generally been a pretty happy guy lately. Getting to be outside in the nice weather is so much fun!