Shannon Phillips

Nanita sent two pictures from her recent visit—the first one she calls “Train Guys” because it’s hilarious how Robin is standing around just like one of the men:

And the second is from inside the train:

Sam and I took Robin to the beach over the Labor Day weekend, and we got some pictures of him there:

It’s hard to notice changes in his development, as it’s happening so gradually now, but he’s definitely taller and his face is becoming less babyish. He plays with other children at the park for longer periods and in more complicated games (he likes to do something resembling tag, although he’ll change his mind abruptly about who is “It”). He bestows hugs and kisses freely on everyone who crosses his path. He tries to pull up his own pants, sometimes when he’s already wearing pants. He also likes to tromp around wearing Sam’s or my shoes.

He enjoys playing in the bath, but hates to get his hair wet, and was terrified of the surf when we brought him too far down the beach. He likes to be read storybooks every day: he’ll most often bring us Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are or Crazy Hair by Neil Gaiman, but he also likes That’s Not My Dragon, a Pat the Bunny type textured book. He sings and dances to recorded music, but he doesn’t like it when Sam or I sing; I find this highly weird and can’t wait until he can talk well enough to explain it to me.

His main focus in play still consists of taking things out of containers and putting them back into different containers. He also very much likes pouring liquids from one container to another. He’s also fascinated by electronics and loves to push buttons of any sort, especially elevator buttons. He loves escalators too and would ride them endlessly as far as I can tell. He still loves Sesame Street and his favorite movie is The Jungle Book. He’s getting pickier about food, preferring pasta and rice to vegetable dishes—some days he doesn’t eat much at all, and other days he finds something he likes and wolfs it down. He seems to get enough variety that I’m satisfied.

And I think that’s pretty much the State of the Robin!