The number eight

This morning Santiago met his new friends, Asa and Sam, for a playgroup. We visited the lovely little park in Sam's neighborhood. Austin has tremendous neighborhood parks, well maintained, clean, with lots of trees, playscapes, and other kids. At the park we met Rachel and hope to visit the Nature Center with her and her Mom, Rebecca, soon. Santiago always makes quiet a stir with the Moms at the playgrounds. He is so cute, they say, and he capitalizes the fact that he is a good flirt too. Asa and Sam are about Santiago's age and being boys share play interests: cars and balls. At the park all eyes turned and all activity stopped when a garbage truck passed by, that is expect Rachel who didn't even notice.

Yesterday Mom and Santiago when to Zilker Park, the major city park and the park in our neighborhood. We watched three guys play futbol, threw rocks into Barton Creek and ran into our friend Annabelle (who greeted Santiago with kisses). All of which Santiago enjoyed tremendously.

Santiago now enjoys pushing his own stroller. There is a bar on the stroller at his height. During our morning walks on Town Lake he likes to get out of the stroller and push it along the path himself. Well, he needs help steering. This morning he walked so far that he wore himself out and crashed early for his nap.

Santiago's fascination with dogs has now been coupled with a comfort around dogs. He will even reach out and touch them. This thanks to time spent around Ainsely's and Jimmie Boone's dogs. Mom's not too thrilled with this as she has read too much about kids getting bit by dogs to be really comfortable with the proximity.

When Santiago and Mom read together, Mom asks Santiago to pick things out of the pictures: butterflies, birds, cats, horses, dogs, the moon. Last night, a little bored with the Winnie-the-Pooh counting book, Mom asked Santiago where the number 8 was and he picked it out with confidence! Smart boy!