DC Day 3: Walking, walking, and more walking. (And Monuments)!

Our third day in DC, we planned to hit the National Mall for monuments. But first, the International Spy Museum!

We stopped at a Starbucks on the way to the spy museum, and then headed straight there. The Spy museum is a fun museum if you like James Bond movies. Nile wanted to go since Nate went two years ago. We moved through it fairly quickly, as I don't think he liked it quite as much as Nate had. We were through there in about an hour.

We stopped on the way back at Paul, the coffee shop where we had eaten breakfast the prior morning. Nile had been wanting to try one of their macarons, since Nate had talked about the "horrible pistachio macaron" he ate there. Nile opted for vanilla and thought that it was great.  While we were there, we put together a game plan for the rest of the morning.  We discussed heading to the White House, but Nile wanted to skip that and just head to the monuments. So, we started at the Washington monument after a quick walk through a sculpture garden on the way.

Holding up the Washington Monument

We made our way through the whole Mall, hitting all the major monuments. Nile liked the WWII monument best.

WWII Memorial

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial

Selfie at the Lincoln Memorial

FDR memorial

FDR memorial

We finished up around 12:30 after walking around the Tidal Basin to the Jefferson Memorial. It was lunch time, so we found a small sandwich shop a few blocks away and walked there.

After lunch we headed back to the hotel, where Nile lasted about 10 minutes before wanting to head back out. So we walked up to the Hirshhorn art museum and spent an hour looking at modern art. The main exhibit was on 80's art, so it was colorful and interesting.

Back to the hotel to regroup. We rested about an hour, then decided to walk to the Capitol building on our way to an early dinner.

Just one more picture, please?

Dinner was at an English pub, literally tucked away in a corner. It was a small place but the food was good.

After that we were pretty tired so we headed back to the hotel and called it a day. We had an early flight and we had walked just over 11 miles. We watched some TV and hung out there for the rest of the night.

It was a great trip.

Drunken sailor?

It feels so wrong, yet so right, to laugh at this.  Go ahead, enjoy.

There's another, even funnier one, in Tom's phone right now.

words...at 19 months

My Novak...

Becky pointed out to me that in the last month or two she has put up more blog posts than I have.  What can I say, life is busy.  Busy is an understatement.

But I did think it was fitting to take a few minutes to sit down and capture a snapshot of Novak at this moment in time.  You might recall that a little over a month ago (just a few short posts ago), Novak got tubes in his ears.

At the time, he wasn't walking at all, and he wasn't talking much.  I had heard anecdotally that kids often started talking more when they got tubes.  We had learned at his first referral appointment that he failed all his hearing tests.  (which he has now passed with flying colors, yay!) 

So for Novak, the last month has been, well, "ear-opening."  A month ago, Novak's verbal library consisted of:

• "wa-da" (water)
• "da-deeeee" (daddy)
• "ma-ma" (mama)
• "daaaaa" (dog)
• "ba-ba" (Papa)

And that was about it.  Now, just a few short weeks later, his vocabulary has grown:

• "mil" (milk)
• "neigh-ni" (fan) <-- This one doesn't make any sense, I know...
• "wing" (swing"
• "binky" (binky, his pacifier) <-- This may be the clearest word he speaks
• "lie" (light)
• "gama" (Grandma)
• "Neigh" (Nate)
• "Ni-ni" (Nile)
• "Na-na" (banana)
• "lello" (yellow)
• "boo" (blue)
• "emma" (cousin Emily)

He also makes sounds:

• growls (like a bear, lion, or pretty much anything he doesn't know the sound of)
• "hoo hoo ha ha" (monkey)
• "oof, oof" (dog)
• "murm murm" (truck)

So I'd say this is great progress!  We're still working on the walking part, although he did take some steps for Papa and Grandma this weekend.  

I won't get into the "terrible twos" which are starting just in time...suffice it to say he has learned how to communicate when he is not getting his way.