We had a busy and fun weekend….so much so that I am just sitting down to write about it a week later! We started off with Max’s first swim lesson on Saturday morning. That afternoon we went to a birthday party for a friend’s two year old, and then celebrated our friend Oliver’s second birthday on Sunday. We were anticipating that swim lessons would be a hit, since Max has always loved baths, but we knew that was no guarantee. Thankfully it was a definite success!

Here’s Max checking out the pool…”It’s like the biggest bathtub I’ve ever seen!”

And then heading for the water:

Intercepted by Daddy, asking to go in:

I love my son enough that I will post pictures of myself in a bathing suit on the internet. Here’s when we first got in the pool:

And during the lesson:

Heading toward the steps to get out at the end:

The swim lessons are held at a local park, which also houses a petting zoo during the summer. After swimming we walked down to check out the animals. We’ve been working with Max on the concept of “one finger touching.” As you might surmise from the name, this involves touching certain things (our kitties, anything fragile) with just one finger. Max is pretty good at doing this and he did lots of one finger touching of the animals, as seen here:

Here he’s trying to feed a piece of straw to the goat. Please excuse my peeling nail polish, I did remove it that afternoon.

A double one-finger touch using both hands:

I didn’t take many pictures at Ishaan’s birthday party Saturday. Max had a good time walking around holding our hands, playing with the balloons and snacking. We did get some pictures at Ollie’s party on Sunday. Here’s Max and me with Justine (who has taken all those great pictures of Max), Kacie, Leanne and their daughters. The birthday boy is not in this picture because he was busy splashing in the kiddie pool they had out.

My friend Leanne, mom to the birthday boy, also has a six-week old daughter, Eva. Max did a great job of gently one-finger touching her:

And then oh-so-sweetly held her hand:

The big news here is that earlier this week Max took two steps by himself! He was standing near his new “Cozy Coupe” car and wanted to get over to it. I was holding his hands and let go, and he stood for a few seconds and then took a couple steps to get to the car! He hasn’t done it since, usually he won’t walk unless we are holding his hands. I think the key was he didn’t even realize he was doing it on his own. It was very exciting to see progress and we will keep working on it. It’s hard to believe Max will be 16 months old on Monday. He is learning so much, he now says “Da Da” and his versions of “woof” (when he sees a dog) “meow” for a cat and “vroom vroom” for a car or truck. He also signs more, please, eat, all done, bath, sleep, apple, milk and will wave, blow kisses and give five on demand. We have been talking about parts of the body and he can usually identify eyes, mouth, nose, head, hair, ears, teeth, hands, fingers, toes and feet. It is so much fun to see him learning new things and to realize how much he understands. Happy 16 months, Bug!