Back before the heat of the devil’s armpit arrived in Southern California, we spent a very foggy morning in Long Beach.  I don’t know if Long Beach looks this way every day, but if so, I would like to live there.  We walked around Shoreline Village and marveled at the quiet.  A place usually so bustling with loud music and vendors and cotton candy was at peace.  Loved the moment while it lasted.

On a totally different note, the boy has really got his running legs.  He’s been able to run since the summer, but now it’s his preferred mode of transportation.  His stamina and speed have improved a lot – he wants to run everywhere!  And jump too. He hops over every crack in the sidewalk or change in the pavement patterns. He still falls down a lot and has the scraped knees to prove it.  It’s so dang cute because he is just being such a little BOY!  As much as I want to say I knew he could do it all along, there was a time where I did wonder whether he’d ever walk at all, let along RUN or JUMP.  So we are thrilled obviously.

It has made things a bit more… exciting, for lack of a better word.  Because he has no safety awareness yet. He will take off running into a parking lot or the street or right smack dab into strangers.  All I can say is we are working on it.  Heart attack by heart attack.

While we were in Long Beach, Stevie got his exercise by chasing the birds.  But these dang pigeons – they are so used to humans, they were completely unfazed by him.  They would just casually waddle out of his way and continue pecking the ground for bread crumbs.  This did not please the prince, so he would try to scare them into flight by screaming at the top of his lungs.  Still nothing.  Out of boredom, the birds were then left alone.