Monkey see, monkey do

This past weekend, Jack and I went to the zoo on Saturday morning. After a year of frequent visits, it's still the park that keeps on giving. A couple of weeks ago, we (or at least I) discovered the lemur enclosure, tucked away behind the waterfall that we've looked at over and over, without wondering what was behind it. And this time, we found the cutest little sculpture garden beside the ape house. It's full of these neat, bronzes of chimps in all sorts of different poses and groupings. To begin with, Jack was a little wary of them. But soon, he was clambering over them and willingly posing for a picture.

Bubbles!

Many of the good things in Jack's life start with Margarita. The joys of a bubble bath are no exception. She put him into the bath with some bubbles recently on a rainy day, when they couldn't go outside. Not surprisingly, the bubbles were a huge hit and have now become part of our morning ritual. This was one of the first times. As you can see, he still had a few things to learn. Not to worry, though. He no longer makes this rookie mistake.

Hammer!!!

Yesterday, Jack and I were out walking, and we ran across our friends Tony and Kevin, who live at the end of the block. They had gotten this totally cool toy as a birthday gift for Jack. Jack was thrilled to receive a "presem" out of the clear blue like this and very eager to get it unwrapped when we got home. The wild thing was that he seemed to have an innate sense of what to do with it. The combination of a small hammer and colored wooden balls spoke to him on some deep, evolutionary, collective-subconscious level. As soon as we got it open, he went to work. We had several talks about how the hammer was only to be used on the balls -- not the dogs, the furniture or the walls. More later on how well that lesson stuck.