A new phase...

I feel like we have moved into a new phase of wonder with Wessy.  The first phase of wonder was during the first few months when I could hardly believe that I had such a beautiful, sweet baby.  Just looking at him was novel, and I have an unreasonable number of videos of him sleeping on my phone just because I never wanted to forget how he looked.  He didn't really do much, it was just the fact that he existed that was so amazing.  My own child.

I have grown used to having a Wesssy, and I have grown very fond of him.  This new phase of Wessy is him becoming more humanoid.  He is growing more interactive and communicative by the second. He signs intermittently (milk, more, all done) and says four words (mama, dada, hi and bye bye) on many occasions.  He sort of waves, some of the time.  If it weren't for Tater already waving perfectly on command two months ago, I would feel like he is very advanced.

He lurches around upright by grabbing the chairs or the coffee table.  His chances of crawling before he walks are seeming fainter and fainter as he grows closer to just walking outright.  He still seems shocked and appalled when he loses his balance and plunks onto his bottom.  His first pair of "real" (still not real) shoes came in the mail today.  Previously he had been sliding around precipitously in his cloth booties.  His new shoes have little rubber pads on the soft soles so that he can get some purchase, plus they look like tiny high tops.  He looks more and more like a real person all the time.  

On one hand, I can't wait for him to walk.  How amazing it will be to watch him be able to toddle around his world.  On the other hand, Wessy walking will demand on all-hands-on-deck approach at all times.  He currently wreaks a not insignificant amount of havoc despite not knowing how to crawl nor walk.  It also is a step on the road to the end of babyhood and towards...going to college.  Don't. even. want. to. think. about. it.

Wessy currently loves cheeking his finger foods (I will find pieces of an hours-ago meal still stashed in his maw), pulling my hair, eating grass, leaning perilously out of his highchair to try to pet Bubba, whining incessantly, licking panes of glass and mirrors and playing with his tube of lotion while I change his diaper.  

We joke that he thinks we are trying to kill him when we wipe his slimy face and hands off after a meal because he screams bloody murder the whole time we do it.  He is of a similar mind about diaper changes unless, of course, you let him hold the lotion tube, in which case he is thrilled.  

I feel simultaneously like he is still so new and strange to me and like I have always known him very well.  Him becoming more communicative means we have more ways to get to know each other but it also means he has more ways to set sail away from me.  But for now, I can still pick him up and hold him for as long as I want, and I plan on milking that for everything it is worth.