It's official! It's summer.

Neko is 11 months old. He's already becoming a toddler. It's nuts. He can walk. He can climb an entire flight of stairs. He eats almost everything. And as of today, he's started throwing mini-temper tantrums. Fun stuff. They are actually so "mini" right now, that we find them to be slightly funny. Is that horrible to say? He makes this high-pitched noise, which is not so much a crying as it is a kind of muppet-sounding, screaming protest. And of course, he thrashes about. Sigh. This is where we are. Still not sleeping 12 hours a night, yet already behaving like a toddler. I guess it's the best of both worlds. Hooray.

*Neko's first pair of shoes. They don't look like this anymore. They are all worn and disgusting from walking and crawling everywhere.

Seriously though, this kid is a doll. We are so happy to be done with this whole terrible school year and into summer. It's wonderful being at home, sitting on our back deck or on our front porch, planning little adventures, exploring the city, and watching Neko discover things for the first time. We are getting into a bit of a routine. Working on getting in all of his regular naps. This is something that causes us some distress, but he does nap. It could be worse. There are going to be a lot of photos on this post because it's been way too long since I've posted anything.

We discovered something called The Big Wonderful, which happens every Saturday and is, well, wonderful. It's a kind of fair with lots of beer and food trucks, a sand pit for kids, and lawn games.

He loved the sand, so we are excited to go to the beach!

He also had an ear infection this summer , which caused his ear drum to rupture. It was pretty stressful. Then he had an allergic reaction to the antibiotics, and we had to take him to urgent care. Not exactly how we wanted to spend our first couple weeks of summer, but he seems to be doing much better now that he's off the antibiotics. I'm taking him to the doctor today for a follow-up to see how his ear drum is healing. Fingers crossed he'll be okay when we get on the plane on Thursday to go to California. Other than some anxiety about his first plan trip, (and one with a healing ear drum), we are absolutely thrilled that we'll get to finally meet Tripp and have Neko meet my side of the family.

Auntie Elizabeth came out to visit us at the end of May. She babysat for us so that we could attend graduation and just spent time hanging out with Neko. He absolutely adored her, and it was so nice to have her staying with us. We wish she lived closer.

Neko also met Eleanor this summer. She did a road trip with Aaron's parents (Arizona to Michigan in the RV) and they stopped off in Denver for several days. They stayed nearby at the Cherry Creek Reservoir. Neko really took to Eleanor, frequently tried to follow her around and liked to lean his head on her. It was very sweet to see. We did some fun things while they were in town. We roasted marshmallows at the RV park, we discovered a new favorite empanada place, and we hung out in the back yard quite a bit.

So that's my update. More to come.