Milestones, pt X

With my parents in town this weekend, it did not take long for me to get scolded repeatedly about not keeping up with Justin's milestones more diligently. Every 15 minutes today, V and I heard "you didn't tell us that he was...", to which we replied, "oh yeah, he's doing that now, too". Hey, we try, but there's not a blog in the world that could capture how incredibly joyful Justin is in person, not to mention trying to document the 1,074 new things he does every day. Watching him grow, learn, and literally transform on a daily basis over the past 7+ months has been just about the most incredible thing that I've ever been a part of. Just amazing.



As for the latest milestones, the new joke around the house is that Justin either has a stash of comic books under his crib mattress or has been staying up late to watch Jay Leno... because his new routine is to wake up in the morning and spend about 15 minutes just laying there laughing and giggling in darkness. And of course by the time we got used to that, he had already added a twist to it. Wednesday morning, V went to scoop him up from his crib as usual and found him standing up in the crib, waist high to the top of the railing, looking about ready to hop over and head downstairs to make his own breakfast. She had been warning me for at least a couple of weeks that it was time to lower the mattress, but I just knew we could buy a little more time.

I guess that's what I get for thinking. Needless to say, once we got over the shock of him pulling himself up in his crib, we immediately lowered the mattress. Well... almost immediately. Of course there was the business of making a movie first (duh... we're the parents that milk every moment for all it's worth, remember?) THEN we lowered the bed. The video is long, but it was so funny to me, I couldn't figure out which parts to cut. It shows everything from Justin being thrilled with his ability to pull himself up, to the bed-lowering process, and ends with his final inspection of the new crib modifications. Just to show off, he also threw in a few James Brown dance moves and a couple of gurgles that sound dangerously close to words. Funny stuff.

At this point, just 3 days later, there is almost zero shock value left in watching him pull himself up. He's fanatical about it now, and has probably pulled himself up at least twice on every possible piece of furniture in the house. And as a result he has become an absolute handful to watch. I find myself secretly wishing for the return of the little immobile baby that stayed wherever you put him. Even the crawling was manageable. But with standing comes falling. And falling. And falling. And falling. And falling. And falling. And then there's the falling. Leading me to believe that this intermediate phase between standing and walking may be the doosey of them all. But then that's what I thought about crawling 3 weeks ago.

During their babysitting stint today, Grandma and PopPop also learned that Justin is now a full-time hand-and-knee crawler (no more commando crawl) and is starting to glide around the house like he's got wheels on his elbows and knee caps. It is so weird how overnight the transition was. We went from not being able to figure out what he wants 1/2 the time, to being able to put him down and letting him figure it out himself. Of course, the toy of choice that he typically crawls to is almost never really a toy at all (he'll pass by three bright squeezy things to get to a remote control, cell phone, shoe, camera, or space heater) but then I guess that's to be expected.

Last but not least, he has progressed to stage 2 baby food (which means tastier food and more variety) and has also added his first taste of table food to his food repertoire. It started with him mushing his way through an occasional slice of bread, then advanced to the occasional cracker... and sadly it has now progressed to the routine "cracker, wine and cheese" midday snack between bottles. Minus the wine and cheese part. On most days anyway. I've yet to capture his contemplative looks on film, but the funny part of the cracker experience is that, because he usually holds the cracker with his entire hand, he has yet to figure out how to get to that last part of the cracker that is trapped underneath his fingers once he has eaten around the edges. Of course, letting it go would mean losing it, so that's not an option. And he obviously can't eat through his fingers, though he has tried this too. So this has been quite the conundrum for him. I think today's strategy was to squeeze his fist, crush the cracker, and just lick the crumbs up once they fall.

Not the most efficient plan in the world. But I've gotta give the kid 8 points for ingenuity.

Update...

I've been told that 24 hours later, while I was in SC interviewing tenants, Justin figured out the cracker thing and learned the virtues of switching hands in order to get at the remaining cracker wedge. Didn't take long I guess.