Cole

If I wink at Cole, he winks back with both eyes (which is a common German habit; maybe it's due to the fact that his seventeen months of life have been spent entirely in Deutschland). 

If I ask him, "Do you want to walk?" he puts up his hands to hang onto my fingers and pulls himself to a standing position, then wobbles up and down the hall, grasping my fingers. Sometimes he lets go with one hand to test his bravery and skill.

If I pull a shirt over his head, he always greets me with a huge grin and a silly giggle when I pop the neck hole over his face; he considers getting dressed every morning a hilarious game of peek-a-boo.  If he's crabby when I start with the shirt, pulling it over his face always evokes a magical transformation from indignant or grouchy to dimpled and goofy. If I forget to play the game, he always reminds me by craning his neck to see if I'm delighted to see him again.

And, if you let him out of your sight, he's most likely to find some mischief to get into. A favorite activity is climbing onto the bench seat around the kitchen table, from which he can reach the sink, the dish drainer, and whatever may be on the counter. Technology is another big draw: telephones, computers, cords. Otherwise, he's probably just working on de-organizing -- pulling books off the shelf, toys out of the bins in the playroom, papers and tidbits off the table in the entryway. One day I found him with his feet in one toy bin and his hands desperately gripping the bin above, stuck in an awkward position and unable to figure out how to push in the bin above or extricate himself from the one below.


But all that mischief does wear the lad out; this morning in church he fell asleep on my lap for most of the service, waking up groggily at the last song to snuggle his sweaty head against my shoulder and suck his two favorite fingers.