A Cerney Periodical

Brock and I have had a few days to ourselves here while Holly rehearsed her buns off in Zakopane. She's actually opening the show as I type this. Break a leg Holly! I'm sure she will rave about it plenty herself, but the director here (whose name I can pronounce, but I'll pass on butchering the spelling for now) is apparently a super-genius who has an amazing gift for the art of theatre. Holly couldn't be happier or more inspired by her decision to accept this amazing role. We had always had our mornings together, but then Holly is off to work, and Brock and I roam the town in search of more sausage. We took a quick tram from the downtown touristy district to this touristy mountain for some beer and a pork sandwich with great views of the city. Once Brock tasted the pork, the lunch I had packed him was of no interest. The man has taste. The mountain range in the background is the Tartrzanski National Park where we hiked to Morskie Oko (previous post) and also the ...

I was a little bit nervous about the trip with Brock to Zakopane. We were looking at a 9 hour flight to Warsaw, one hour layover, one hour flight to Krakow, and finally a 4 hour bus ride to Zakopane. Little did I know, Brock is a travelling champion, and good fortune was squarely on our side. Our first bit of luck was evident upon the closing of the plane doors. Brock and I had somehow landed three seats entirely to ourselves in the front row behind business class. They put all the babies in these front two rows, and it really was a murderers row of wailing children. I can't imagine paying for business class and having only a curtain (which Brock would later use for much peek-a-boo delight) to block the non-stop screaming. Brock just stared at the mayhem. "What's their problem?" he asked with a confused look, and went back to playing. Eventually the sleep caught up to him, and he nestled in at my feet for a very long nap. When the sun came up and filled the...

Brock has moved on from ring stacking to block stacking. It's slightly less frustrating as his failures amuse him. They grow up so fast!

We've had lots of rain recently. Brock has finally noticed it and is pretty enthralled by the concept. We were just playing in his room when the storm broke, and he scampered off to the window to check it out. He found not only some great rain, but also an impromptu peek-a-boo session with Brock fully in control.

Brock celebrated his 1st birthday this Saturday. After a lovely morning opening presents and swinging at the park, Brock decided he wanted to host a rooftop BBQ pool party. We invited some friends and grilled up Brock's favorite meats (chicken and bratwurst) and had a grand 'ol time. I must apologize for the lack of photos. Hosting a BBQ as a single daddy keeps you pretty busy, but we did manage an adorable video. I fully intended to give Brock a cupcake with a single candle, but he partied so hard that he needed to go straight to bed, and daddy kept forgetting his cupcake. Perhaps he'll get another small party with mommy and we can properly sugar him up. 

We have a windup toy snail. It's fun and slow, and Brock likes to chase it around. He also picks it up and throws it sometimes. One of those throws somehow altered its internal mechanics and transformed it into a turbo-charged snail on steroids. Brock was delighted by his work.

Brock has loved stackers for some time. He never stacks them, but he loves spinning the rings on the floor and watching them slowly come to a stop. That all changed yesterday when Brock finally figured out that the rings fit on the stick. The following videos are a bit long, but they tell the entire story of Brock learning how to stack. The story begins with me noticing across the room that Brock had successfully put a ring on the stacker twice! I pulled out my phone, confident that I would capture a third success. That's when we ran into some serious coordination frustration. See for yourself.... By the end of two minutes, I felt that perhaps I was pushing him a little too hard. We would forget about the rings and come back later. But Brock was determined, obsessed. Less than a minute after I had put the camera away, he was back at it. His first attempt of this second session was an instant success that, of course, occurred off-camera.  I immediately fired up the camera ...