May your birthday be a happy one and we hope will be one of many more to come! For those BLOG readers who might be of a mind to enquire as to how many spankings she should receive for the day, we have to suggest another venue for that enquiry because we ain’t tellin’!
The last two weeks have seen some extraordinary growth in our little one. Previously, he had started walking with assistance and has gotten quite good at orbiting the coffee table and the standing play tables. A happy bonus is when he’s playing peek-a-boo with Taz at the coffee table…his laugh alone is worth the price of admission. He occasionally will stand at the corner of the coffee table near one of the musical tables and start shaking his head back and forth rapidly whilst laughing all the while. You can’t help but smile at it if not laugh out loud! We’ve also figured out how to wave bye-bye as well as do the clapping and patting thing.
What took us by surprise is that he’s found his forward gear with a vengeance. He started out doing a crab walk about a week or so ago. He’d always been gifted in the fine arts of the butt skooch and it always amazed me how quickly he could get from one end of the room to another just by rotating about his axis in that fashion. Unfortunately, he did most of his crab walking at Grammy’s so I was only able to catch one instance of it on a Saturday afternoon. But it was definitely authentic…I had no idea our boy was taking notes from that last trip to the beach!
That crab walk was very quickly replaced with zone-5 afterburner forward momentum and it’s startling how quick he can be. A case in point…last night Daddy headed from the living room into the kitchen to get some dinner. Nicholas let gravity do it’s thing (9.8 meters per second2 downward momentum) and then he had turned to engage his target. Forty five seconds later, he was at the dishwasher inspecting a stray piece of Taz’s food (and given a chance, I’m sure he’d chow down on that premium Iams!). That was a good seven meters (approximately twenty-one feet!) which is pretty good for a little one just starting out.
Eagle-eyed BLOG viewers will know full well that he’s got a very good mischievious grin. That grin doesn’t compare with the actual mischief and he’s now getting into anything and everything that isn’t nailed down or otherwise secured. He’s a sly one, he is! Remote controls are not safe in his airspace. Neither are papers that are laying about. And we really like wires, particularly those hanging on the back of computers…
And whenever you look to find him, you find him where he is not… — Danny Kaye, The Court Jester
He’s certainly going to keep us on our toes. It’s very clear he’s ready to do that walking thing and it’s been fun watching the progression from holding onto an object for dear life to hey, I’m cool…I don’t really need to hold this thing. The confidence changes are quite amazing to see…even with the occasional bruise and attendant crying jag when he decides to do a face plant. But he’s usually right as rain soon enough afterward and then we’re off to the races again!
The other thing that really amazes me is that you can see more and more where he’s obviously figuring things out for himself. A case in point: Nicholas was at the coffee table and he wanted to get to Daddy’s easy chair. But it was a little too far with too little to hold onto. He got this momentary look of intense concentration and his eye fell upon the musical ball tower thingy (put the ball in the top holes and watch the ball run down the ramp whilst the music plays…pretty nifty thing, really). That tower thingy was within his reach so he transferred to it. He then pushed it a bit and essentially walked it over to the chair…whereupon he was suddenly distracted by Mommy’s papazan chair! 🙂
The changes are getting so pronounced that he’s changing day-by-day. It just amazes me to no end watching this process where he’s learning to stand on his own two feet. He’s no one’s fool and he’s certainly no dummy…he’s got a pretty darned sharp intelligence for a ten-month old and he’s going to be formidable when he gets older. He’ll be formidable for another reason at that time because we’ve definitely found that he has a temper and it can be pretty intense at times. But compared to other babies of a comparable age I’ve encountered…he’s really been the best of the lot.
We’ve also gotten much better at feeding ourselves and we’re rapidly ending our fascination with food in jars in favour of real people food. You’d be surprised at the foods he’s sampled…last night’s dinner was a bit of a yummy pot roast that Mommy put together (MMMMMM…pot roast rocks!). He’s been eating macaroni and mashed potatoes for quite a while but he’s definitely moved up to more substantial foods. It’s still a bit of a pain for him trying to chew the food because he’s only got those two teeth on the bottom row so far with no others that we can see right now. But he makes up for it in enthuiasm and gets the job done and that’s what counts! We’re also started drinking from sippy cups…before we know it, he’ll be wanting a glass of the good stuff! That doesn’t mean our big boy isn’t fond of getting the bottle…believe me, he’s very happy at the end of the day to get that bottle…so much so that it puts him to sleep! 🙂
With all of these changes as quickly as they’re happening, who knows what he’ll do tomorrow…
