My Eyes are set on Madagascar

Well, Cole has entered an obsessive phase - where he fixates on something and then it's just that thing, all the time.

Like eyes. For some reason, he has decided that - at least for the moment - the eyes are the coolest part of the body. And I don't just mean he likes eyes. He looks for eyes in everything. He points to his eyes, my eyes, your eyes, stranger's eyes, the cat's eyes, eyes of the characters in his books, eyes in the masks we have hanging on the wall, patterns that look like eyes in things....eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes. It is his obsession (closely followed, by the way, by another favorite: "ball.")

But perhaps most fascinating is his obsession with Madagascar. No, not the kid's movie - he's never seen that. I mean the country. For like two months now, every time he sees a map or a globe, he looks and then points to Madagascar. Every night, we say goodnight to this world map on our wall that has push pins for all the places we've traveled, and he points to Madagascar with a big smile and says something like "Madagagagas." He just loves Madagascar. We never taught him that. We have no idea where this came from.

So I guess maybe he's trying to tell us he wants to go to Madagascar. Too bad they're kind of in the midst of a civil war right now. It does, ironically, happen to be the only place on earth where lemurs come from. And if you don't know what a lemur looks like.......think "eyes!!":