He is a mostly delightful, sometimes maddening and always cute little buddy.
He is quickly (all too quickly) traversing the bridge between baby and toddler-hood.
He favors finger foods so that he can feed himself thankyouverymuch and has been known to violently wrest the spoon from his feeders' hands, spraying food everywhere. He likes avocado, beans, cheese and banana but he LOVES blueberries. He will do anything to eat a blueberry. Recently at Whole Foods he came perilously close to face-planting when he leaned dangerously far out of the cart to try to grab a carton of blueberries with his chubby hands. He drinks an improbably large amount of formula (still), which we are slowly trying to supplant with less babyish things (though I admit my heart will break the day he is totally done with taking a bottle).
He says Mama and Dada quasi-reliably and occasionally will bust out a Bubba, an agua or a tete. He seems to understand English and Spanish equally. If you ask him "where's Dada?" he will swivel his head expectantly toward Stevo.
He gleefully dangles his food off the side of his highchair so that his furry "brother" will eat it and then lick his hands clean. Consequently, Bubba is warming up to Wes quite a bit.
He writhes and wiggles and squirms all day and all night. When it is time to put him to bed, he rolls around in his sleep sack and often undoes it. Often he will wiggle around in his crib until the very second that sleep overcomes him. When I go to check on him he will be frozen in mid-motion, thrown across the top of his stuffed animals in all kinds of awkward positions like a fallen Civil War hero on the battlefield. Often we find him standing up holding onto the side of the crib in the morning with a grin of victory on his face.
He predictably grins his Jack-O-Lantern grin (five teeth and counting) if you bark like a dog or push him on the swings. The other day, we were pushing him on the swings and a bus came by the playground (he LOVES all motor vehicles, in particular the garbage truck) and it was like Christmas morning! He also likes to be fake "ambushed" while he is out cruising around the living room furniture and laughs an awesome bubbly laugh when he gets "caught."
He smells like a puppy covered in graham crackers or a bottle of warm milk wrapped in hay. Except for his feet--those smell like a normal grown person's stinky feet and have been that way since he was practically a newborn!
He has a bit of a biting problem and I don't know that he is clear about the differences between kissing and biting because he seems to bite with a lot of love, if that is possible. He is certainly not aware, however, of how sharp his little teeth can be.
We recently switched him from his rear-facing carseat into one that is, fittingly, like a captain's chair which faces forward. He adores the wind in his face. Last night, as we came back from the city, he chewed on his toys and held forth with a running commentary about the scenery and how he was feeling.
After many months of being content to be held by anyone and everyone, he is getting a little stranger-shy. He will cry until mama takes him back (I don't mind).
He loves being in the water and doesn't even mind being dunked, though he doesn't understand yet about the whole closing-your-mouth thing when you go under. He will sit on the side of the pool face me as I am standing in the pool and hold onto my hands and let me swing him into the water. He will do this again and again even as his little lips turn blue and his teeth start to chatter.
Every day my heart explodes a little more and he does something new or interesting. It seems like every day more of the person he is becoming emerges and he becomes a little more defined. He is less like a squishy baby and more like a BOY. It hurts a little to think that he won't always be little, but it's also so, so wonderful to watch him grow.
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