With letters you can make words. This is Max's new revelation, and he is happy, because as far as he is concerned, there is only one word that can be spelled, and he can spell it: M A X. "Hey Max, what's M-A-X say?" "Massss!"

"What's D-A-D-A spell?" "Massss!"

"What's M-A-M-A spell?" "Massss!!" And so forth.

More entertaining than spelling is the 6-foot walk from the fridge to the metal back door on the side of our kitchen, where those letters which have not been tossed behind the fridge are placed, after a wobbly walk, before being replaced on the fridge. This game is great because he will play it alone (so that's why walking evolved) for upwards of 10 minutes, during which time several dishes can be washed or much of the Styles section can be digested.

This walking and letter-recognizing made me think that he was so grown up that maybe, just maybe, we would be able to listen to regular-person music instead of the Dan Zanes version of the Hokey Pokey. For people without kids, Dan Zanes is the former lead singer of the Del Fuegos who, after having kids and tiring of Raffi, started a hipper-than-thou cool music for kids kind of outfit. Their early gigs were reportedly attended by the likes of Madonna and Apple Paltrow and the rest of the popular crowd. Many albums later, Dan Zanes rocks such venues as the Natick Mall and is just acceptable enough to get completely overplayed when an obsessive-compulsive 21-month old is "in charge" of the music. So I put on London Calling, an album that has not seen the light of day in, oh, say, 21 months.

Max's comment? "No. No noise. Want music."

We will ask his pediatrician about this before panicking.

Ah, the chocolate-covered pretzel. Is there anything finer? Leah got roped into teaching cooking to a bunch of 3-year olds and settled on "chocolate pizza" as the right recipe after testing a variety of Mario Batali-inspired offal concoctions and discovering that pre-schoolers don't much like sweetbreads or chicken hearts, even with cheese sauce.

A chocolate pizza is a pool of melted chocolate chips mixed with a little vegetable oil, poured on a paper plate and dotted with candy. The chocolatier places the plate in the fridge and cools the molten chips into a disc which can be cut with a pizza cutter and consumed whilst it melts, thus spoiling one's dinner and sweater in one fell swoop. The experimenting left us with a lot of melted chocolate, and I had the good sense to only eat some of it with a spoon, leaving the rest for putting on pretzels. Max rather enjoyed this one.

The kids at the day care would have enjoyed it, too, except that the teacher who was shopping for Leah forgot to get one ingredient: the chocolate. "Is it important?" she asked. I do not think Leah answered her honestly, because how would you do that without insulting someone? She audibled to English muffin pizzas and plates full of candy, and three-year olds do not know the difference when something like that happens.

Today I took Max out for brunch with Perry and Ella, which was very exciting for all of us. We were placed in the "cage," a section of Doyle's far from people who are there to drink. I think they ought to name it something else. Maybe something less demeaning. Max enjoyed a chocolate chip pancake and saying Hi to the waitress 57 thousand times. He also said that he loved her. About a month ago, Max started saying, "I love you, Dada," when I left for work in the morning, and that was nice. Then yesterday I caught him saying it to a chair: "I love you, chair." He is really into chairs, but still.

The rest of the day was spent napping and cooking short ribs, which is making the house smell fab. It is hard to get onesself to go outside when there is meat a-cookin' and it is 12 degrees out. And so we stay in.

Recently, Max got his first haircut. We can't recommend Sal's barbershop in JP highly enough. Sal Jr. was able to convince Max to stop flailing long enough to get sprayed with water (note that I got a little sprayed as well), have his hair combed, and have a sharp scissors around his ears, all without a nick or tears.

He looks older without the mop top.