Crawling and Cruising

Eat Your Vegetables!

This has been an exciting week as far as major milestones go. One day I had Nathan playing in his bug box while I was cooking. When I looked over towards his direction, he was working on standing up. Now, considering that he was in a cardboard box, I decided to stand by, while he worked, in case he toppled over. Sure enough, seconds later, he was standing!

Looking for Trouble

Then, later that night, before bed, I had him stand against his crib. Before I knew it, he was cruising along the crib bars, going for the clock radio that is beside his crib. The next day, I had him practice his cruising on other surfaces like the sofa or coffee table.

And then there's crawling. Nathan's crawl is...developing. He pretty much only crawls when he wants to get something that he can't reach. So, his crawl always starts out with one arm reaching out and then his head flops to the other side. Kick, kick, kick. Then his other arm reaches out, and his head flops to the other side. He repeats this exaggerated front crawl swimming style crawl until his hand reaches the desired object. In the picture below, Nathan had just successfully crawled to explore Teddy's food egg. He hurries over towards the action and gives me this look.

Don't worry, I was paying attention to make sure Nathan didn't eat any of Teddy's food. He picked up a piece, looked at it, but then put it down. (Even though his pincer grasp is pretty good. He's now averaging a 8 out of 10 successful food in the mouth events.)

Sleep has been weird lately. He's been waking up more often at night. One night, he woke up 3 times! Naps have also been weird too. Most of the time he sleeps for about 40 minutes. But then one day, he slept for 2.5 hours. It must have been a growth spurt because when he woke up, Steve and I both thought that he looked taller. We measured him and he was 29 inches long. Last time I measured him, it was a month ago and he measured 27 inches. I guess with all this excitement of growing and moving, I'd have a difficult time sleeping well too. 

I have come to realize that my little boy is not so helpless anymore. During breakfast this morning, I was watching him eat his little puffs. One of the puffs was stuck on his lip and to fix it, he lifted his left hand towards it and pushed the puff into his mouth. If you're reading this, you're probably thinking, woopdee doo, he pushed food into his mouth. But for some reason, that little act made me so proud of him. [Sniff] my little man is growing up. 

Tomorrow is our last swimming lesson. I've been a bit disappointed about what we've been learning in the class, I was expecting that Nathan would be able to float on his back by the end of the lesson, but really, the only thing that we've gained was being able to hold his breath under water, more confidence when in the water, and cute water baby pictures!

It was good to be able to take the class with the other mommies and their babies. The expression on each of their faces are too cute. I love to watch the babies and their mommies. There's a really sweet thing about the interaction. 

Steve enjoyed his first Father's day and this was the last week of his sabbatical. It has also been really interesting to see how his interaction with Nathan has evolved over the past month. I can tell that Steve is a lot more comfortable with playing with Nathan and Nathan is starting to trust him as much as he trusts me. 

It's hard to believe that Nathan has been a part of our lives as long as he was living inside the baby bump. It's been a quick 38 times 2 weeks. He's grown so much and I look forward to watching him grow and change even more.