Three times a baby

The last three days have been wonderful though absolutely exhausting - again, that Meh has kept up this energy level for four months is simply amazing and I feel bad that I wasn't doing extended watching of Zachary more often. Zachary and I have taken walks with Korby; attended a "gigglers" parent-child class/holiday party (another dad was there for a few minutes, but before I could say hi, he had to skip out for work; the moms and course instructor seemed happy to get the 'guy' point of view and thanked me for coming); gone shopping; visited mommy daily; and today we even got the oil changed (a proper "manly" activity if there ever were any). I know Meh has missed him terribly, and is looking forward to her day off with him tomorrow - it'll be my turn to miss him during the day.

Zachary is so fun to play with, and he's discovering new skills every day. Yesterday we spent a little time in the exersaucer. (Don't worry, it was just a few minutes -- as with everything else, it's apparently considered detrimental to a baby's development. I seriously think doctors want us locking our kids in padded cells for their first 18 years.) It's got a bunch of activity-type things, and he'd been doing great at grabbing and playing with the various items.

The exersaucer has a little 'control panel' thing with three buttons and graspable plastic "book" pages. Zachary inadvertently hit the buttons from time to time previously, but yesterday he was watching me, so I hit a button. He looked at it, and then hit it himself (after a few misses). His eyes got all wide, and he spent the next few minutes hitting all of the buttons. I tried to do the same with the book 'pages', showing how they turn and make a happy noise. He didn't imitate that immediately, but while my attention was elsewhere, he apparently got the idea - the book was on a different 'page' when I looked back at it. Today he was hitting the buttons with much more consistency and accuracy, and smiling all along. Go Zachary!