The last day of March had some cool lighting with rain clouds mixed with sun, so I took some pictures of the beautiful trees outside our house:

On April 1st we spent some time at Café au Play:

More things blooming and growing on April 2nd – including apple trees, blueberries, and some raspberries we planted in March:

The weekend of April 11th we traveled to Vancouver, B.C. (by airplane!) for a visit with family. Ari enjoyed riding the sky train and the little ferries and playing in the wonderful parks:

When we had another weekend day off together, we biked to OMSI:

In their sand area, Ari was saying “brush teeth” and rubbing this beaver toy against a toy hippopotamus’s mouth. Also, it turns out he can say “hippopotamus” and knows what it is!

On the way home, we picked up this little balance bike at the consignment shop! He’s still a little intimidated but was also very excited, talking about “Ari bi…cycle!”

That afternoon, we hired a babysitter so A. and I could spend some time together. We ended up using our time to build a sandbox!

Also going on in the yard and garden – we recently had a window well dug out and a larger egress window put in the downstairs bedroom:

Our garden this year is pretty minimal, but we planted celery, lettuce, swiss chard, and potatoes in this bed:

And we just weeded around the existing strawberries in this bed:

We put artichokes out front, and we still need some tomatoes!

Ari has seen baby goats at the nearby playground on two separate occasions this month! The second time, we showed up and he saw them and ran across the park shrieking, “Goats! Me-eh-eh! Goats! Me-eh-eh!” While he was petting them, he was saying, “eat grass” and trying to feed them grass, then he put his face down to try to eat it too…

The other day, we had a ton (literally) of sand delivered to our driveway and hauled it up and back to the sandbox by buckets and wheelbarrow:

Ari woke up from his nap that day and had a grand old time in the backyard:

There’s more to come this month, with a big trip to visit family in the Washington, D.C. area, but I’ll save that for another post.

Just a summary of our experience of Ari at 22 months old:

People describe him as “happy.” What more can you ask for as a parent? He’s definitely been a pretty happy guy this month, and more so when he’s well rested and fed (I always feel like I’m falling short in keeping him that way! Why is it so hard?). His vocabulary explosion continues and there is no way I could count the words he knows now. He says some simple sentences, usually involving requests for books to be read. Sometimes at home he’s just talking constantly and I can’t understand all of what he’s saying. Sometimes it’s whining or shrieking and sometimes just chatter. When he finally falls asleep for a nap or at night, sometimes my ears are ringing! Especially with the nonstop babbling and singing when he’s settling down for sleep. He’s also doing some “symbolic” play, according to one of his teachers. I’ve seen him pretend something is something else, like the beaver “toothbrush.” I’ve also seen him pick up his toy phone and hold it to his ear and say, “Hello, George” (George is his new Curious George doll). His teacher was telling me about his “experiments” with putting sand in his eyes or eating it after she told him that would hurt or it wouldn’t taste good. I tend to think he’s just trying to drive me crazy when he does something like that after I’ve told him not to, so I appreciated her perspective that he’s just being a little scientist. I guess that’s his job right now!