One!

The wee babe turned one last weekend.

Having already celebrated thoroughly the previous weekend...

...we opted to skip the (more) cake and (more) presents, and head into town instead.

We were a bit skeptical about the tyke's ability to hold still long enough to make the train ride in, but he did a great job (note the nerdy matching hats).

We met with some lovely friends in the North End for pasta (no documentation of this portion of the festivities; all were too covered in garlic butter and/or bolongese to handle the camera), then we took a brisk walk to the aquarium.

staring at penguins

staring at fish

definitely not staring at dada

The little man was very into the seals and penguins and fish and turtles, and had a ball until we had to jam him back into warm clothes to hustle and catch our train. It helped that it was relatively quiet and that the aquarium is set up as one long series of ramps, so he basically got to run around like a madman all afternoon... his very favorite thing to do, and a very fitting birthday gift, I happen to think.

Fiber. Art.

Ike and I went to the deCordova museum and sculpture park a couple weekends ago with some friends. There were yarny things inside...

...and yarny (rope-y, really) things outside.

This huge installation piece was super cool. "The work is comprised of 1.4 million feet of rope collected from the Eastern seaboard", according to the website. Hand knotted. Really puts those cabled sweaters into perspective. It was a perfectly crisp New England autumn day, the leaves were at their peak, the babies were agreeable. Successful all around, I'd say. I do wish I'd done a better job taking pictures, but with the tyke running (not figuratively) everywhere and doing his best to climb the artwork and eat the leaves, I'll count it as a win that I got a handful of usable ones.