Well, people did say we were tempting fate by naming him Moriarty, but I think he's just living up to the hacker precedent set by his parents. About a week after we installed child safety locks he learned how to defeat them. Granted, we didn't use the super fancy magnetic kind, we just 3D printed some classic L-shaped tabs, but he's got these tiny little arms and he can just slip them into the cabinet and defeat the safety locks. We discovered this the day he came out of the kitchen holding a jiffy pop package. It's shiny and has a handle so it's not surprising he thought it was a toy and carried it around the house. Our current solution for some of the cabinets is to just tape them shut with blue tape. He doesn't have the dexterity to pull it off. Take that mini evil genius!
The most fun thing that started this month is our dog walks. Not walking a dog, but walks to look for dogs. One Saturday morning Moriarty got his shoes and brought them to me. Then he pointed at the front door and made his attempt at woofing sounds. It was pretty clear that he wanted to go out and meet doggies. So that's become a thing. Many evenings and every day on the weekends we go for walks and meet the doggies. This gives him walking practice. Pip shot a great video of him just walking down the sidewalk and exploring the world. He's regularly walking 0.25 mi or more. We get coffee, and then we go looking for dogs. We always ask the owners "Can we meet your doggie" and then we always practice touching gentle. I want him to learn that not all dogs want to meet people, and it's never ok to touch a dog without the owner's permission. It's mostly for his safety but it's also a good practice. Touch gentle is a common theme these days. We practice touching the plants gentle (which only happens 1/4 of the time so my philodendrons are suffering), and they reinforce it at school. He's also getting better at the order of operations of things in his routine. If he wants to go for a walk he has to get his shoes then sit in our lap. If he wants to read a story he'll pick up a book and bring it to us then sit in our lap.
He's getting taller and leaner. I don't think he's gained much weight but his belly seems a bit smaller and his head is enormous. I am currently buying him 24 month shirts because the smaller ones don't fit over his head. The increased activity is also doing a number on his clothes. He wore the knees out of a pair of jeans so I patched them with monkeys playing guitar. When we talk about noses he'll point to his nose now. Except today when I asked him where his nose was and he pointed to his ears. Either he's become confused or he's screwing with us because he thinks it's funny. It's honestly hard to tell. But when I ask if something is a hat he always puts it on his head, and if you mention monkeys he'll usually pat his head and make monkey noises. I even put him in his monkey suit and he had a grand time looking at himself in the mirror. He's also gotten better at climbing. He can use boxes to climb onto furniture, and is appropriately fearless. The couch cushions are quite bouncy and great fun.
He's still a great eater. He's better at telling me what he wants and when he wants more. He'll even eat garlic pickles! We started using forks and I'm trying to teach him how to stab his food. He mostly treats it like a spoon, or a drum, but we'll keep practicing. We were having breakfast yesterday and I had gone in the other room and he made whiny needy sounds to get my attention because he wanted more milk. I explained that if he wants my attention to use my name, "mama", and I'll come help him get what he needs. I said it a couple times but he didn't seem to be paying attention. About half an hour later he was playing blocks and then said "mama" and made the milk sign. He totally gets it. Or at least gets that adding mama will help him get what he wants.
We took 2 trips to the zoo. One with the Johnsons and another with Ben and Kim. He got to pet a goat for the first time. He was kinda hesitant but tried it out. I think he prefers dogs. We also took a field trip to Home Depot. We're building him a Learning Tower so he can help out in the kitchen and we needed wood and hardware. He and Pip shopped for gloves while I got some cuts made so the wood would fit in our Hyundai. He loves to help out. We bought him a toddler sized broom and he 'sweeps' the floor like Mommy.