My Quirky Boy.

Alec has started a new thing: if you going into his room to play with him, he grabs a soft blue blanket that hangs over one end of his crib and hands it to you. You then must drape the blanket over your shoulders (sort of prayer-shawl style) for the duration of the playtime. That somehow signifies that you are indeed making the commitment to play with him. And it's not just me he does this to; he has Presented The Blanket to three different people this week.

Alec's Uncle Jimmy used to greet visitors to his house by giving them one of his father's undershirts, so I'm thinking this is a Libutti-gene-influenced activity.

Also new is an obsession with the bathtub. For the first 16 months of his life, Alec has screamed bloody murder every time we put him on the tub. We tried everything that may be bothering him- hotter water, cooler water, toys in, toys out, siblings in, siblings out, standing up, sitting down- and nothing stopped the screaming. A few weeks ago Dan introduced some new bath toys to Alec, and, combined with growth and maturity, that seemed to do the trick. Now Alec stands in the tub, refusing to sit down, shivering and with wrinkled feet, and continually dumps water from a few cups into the bathwater. If you try to take him out, he screams just as loud and ferociously as he did three weeks ago if you put him in.

I'm not sure which is worse.

He's a quirky kid sometimes. But, oh, what a love he is.