Amidst the busy day yesterday I took a few minutes to visit the lake with Anthony's 22-month-old Cousin Jena...

I asked her to turn around and smile for me...

She immediately wanted to throw stuff into the lake, reaching down to grab a blade of grass. Throwing stuff into water is apparently a primal instinct in children, as we saw last year in "Throwin' Rocks", earlier this year on a beach in Japan, among others.

There was somewhat of a headwind so it was challenging to get things into the water, but she got a few.

I plucked a sprig [...]

Holy Cow, today was a busy day, with the monster play I posted about earlier seemingly the only time to relax. I'm too tired to post much tonight, so just a quick few shots of a monster hit Anthony did this afternoon. His game has definitely moved up a notch since last year's baseball play.

He'd hit it so hard that the thick plastic ball actually dented. You can see it dented even in the first shot above.

(He's wearing a shirt from his old preschool gymnastics class.)

Anthony, Josh, and I made up an impromptu game, "Monster Game", where I try to get them amid roars and growls, but I'm thwarted if they hit me with a soft squishy basketball. It's a kind of rough play that my folks would never have let us do in the house when I was little, but somehow as grandparents they let slide. 🙂

Of course, both Josh and Anthony relish beaning me with the balls. If I'm able to catch one without a ball, the other has to "save" him (by beaning me with a ball).....

The boys asked the [...]

Anthony's 22-month-old Cousin Jena had watched Anthony and Cousin Josh play with this toy earlier. She seemed to know more about it than I did as I watched from an easy chair across the room, but suddenly she started an intensive course of search or inspection of some kind...

I had no idea she was actually looking for something until she pulled it out from the bowels of the toy and showed me with an announcement of "find it" ("I found it!"). She is one smart cookie, and I realized that she participates so fully with the older boys' play [...]

In these pictures Anthony is sporting a LEGO watch that his cousin Josh gave him when he arrived the other day. LEGO's design is ridiculous.... it pinches him every time he puts it on or takes it off... but he loves it, and has suddenly shown a greater interest in telling and measuring time.