the baby beach

We're coming to the end of a glorious summer here in Maine, and Labor Day weekend weather has been gorgeous. Clear, sunny days with temperatures in the 70s, a slight chill in the evening tells us that it's fall. We camped again at Rockport on Friday evening. On Sunday, we all went to a secret little beach on Bailey Island with the Horches. The views north are to Orr's Island via the cribstone bridge. It was a new place for Binbin, so he was a bit reserved. But with Baba holding him, he watched as the bigger kids caught hermit crabs and regular crabs--and fed them freshly split mussels--in the tidepools.





And here are some quick jottings on what Binbin has been up to these days.

His favorite activity remains...you guessed it...drumming. He arranges and re-arranges drums, copper canisters, and copper lids in the living room, the sun room, the play room, the kitchen floor. He chooses typically the longest set of drumsticks and fires away. Binbin likes having others join the fun, and he will dictate to you which drumsticks you may use, and which copper canisters or lids, known as "cymbals", are yours.

Besides drumming, he likes to play with his 40-odd matchbox cars. He has banished the wooden rails and trains from the train table, so that the cars can participate in a demolition derby. Binbin climbs on top of the table to supervise the destruction.

Monkey and blankie and blankie remain his companions at bedtime and at other times throughout the day. He will share some of his favorite foods with these companions including: marshmallows, gummie worms, chocolate alphabet cookies, raspberry yogurt with sucanat, peaches with sucanat, frozen bananas with sucanat, pie crust, you get the picture.

Binbin is all business if you announce that we are going to the beach. He will put away the drums and canisters and drumsticks, and then gather all of his sandbox toys: large and small frisbees, shovels and rakes, buckets and a bulldozer. And we go on our merry way. If he is awake upon return, he will request to have ice cream at the "little house 小房子," which means Cote's Ice Cream in Brunswick. He likes the raspberry sorbet.

He still likes to make art with lots of colors. Most recently, he's been into watercolor paints. He carefully dips his brush in water, eliminates the excess along the rim of a bowl, and chooses, in order, each of about 20 colors to apply to his paper. On occasion he will use Mama's colored pencils. And last night, after Kidder Smith came to dinner, Binbin delightfully stamped Chinese woodblock characters. We are still trying to figure out with the woodblocks are antique or whether they are a modern-day fake.

Binbin is still pretty shy with adults, though he surprised us last night, when he gabbed at length in Chinese with Shuqin ah-yi. Perhaps it was the comfort of speaking in Chinese. But, each day, Binbin's grasp of English improves. He will say "this one" and "please" and "Binbin likes..." and "many, many." He will also correct you: if you say "yanse 顏色," he will say "bushi, nashi COLORS 不是，那是 COLORS."

He is facsinated by Miss Donna's vegetables. And morning and evening at daycare, we will spend 5 or 10 minutes searching for and appreciated the reddening tomatoes, the green peppers, the small and tiny cucumbers. Binbin likes to gently touch each one. Of course, a ripe tomato will fall from time to time, and we must ask sheepishly if we may have that one!

We are reading lots of books:

Up, Down and Around (a book about how vegetables grow)
Time to Pee (you can guess what that's about)
How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon
Mouse Mess