11 months

Subtitle 1 - Adventures of a boy on the move
Subtitle 2 - Almost a year old already?!?!?

Charlie has been truly crawling for about a week and a half. It's been interesting. We did our best to prepare Zach, but I hear a regular refrain of "Charlie - NOOOOO!" Charlie seems to have the unerring instinct to go for the toys that Zach is currently playing with. He'll crawl right past piles of his toys, past a lot of randomly strewn cars and trains, straight to the nice line of cars that Zach has just set up for a race. I guess that sort of thing is just built into the DNA of a little brother.

His crawling technique remains the same - the right leg extended so he's on his foot rather than knee. And while he's gotten much faster, so far it's been manageable. He has happily explored the living room and toy room (boy, can he cause some destruction in there - everything pulled off the shelves!), with one of his favorite targets remaining the dog. He hasn't wandered far into the kitchen - he doesn't seem to like the hardwood floor. Can't really blame him, and I like that he's staying more or less in the same room. We'll see how long that lasts.

You would have thought that he'd be content (or at least more content) now that he can get to things he wants. But not necessarily - this boy really wants to walk. What amuses us is that with all the stuff Charlie can access, all the nice low furniture he can use to try to pull himself up on, he still just wants our fingers. He will crawl across a room to reach for our hands in our laps. I even saw him do this to one of the other moms at our ECFE class! If he's standing at the ottoman, he'll cruise himself over to us so he can hang onto our fingers, as if the ottoman wasn't holding him up just fine.

He has been pulling himself up using our fingers for a while (without us helping him), and has pulled himself up on some random lower objects like laundry baskets, but the furniture is apparently beyond his abilities at the moment. I think it's his short little legs. :) He also got his first little bump/scratch on his head the other day; a victim of the corner of a bookshelf.

Obviously the crawling is the big news at our house, but Mr. Charliebug also has a new tooth poking through on the top. I'm amazed - I can barely feel it, but somehow he's already managing to grind it on his bottom teeth. What a horrible noise!!! I'm happy though, that he didn't seem to have a hard time with the tooth coming in; I didn't even have a clue until I heard the grinding.

He's going to put those teeth to good use - we've been continuing to move more towards "finger foods" as opposed to purees. He loves to feed himself; if he had his way I think he'd have done away with the baby food a while ago. But he still has a hard time with some foods - it takes him a long time to "chew" them up, and he gets frustrated. He also has squirrel tendencies - he stuffs as much food as possible into his mouth. I'll think he's eaten what I gave him and will go to give him some more, only to have him open his mouth and show me all the mashed up food stored between his bottom gums and cheeks.

He's also showing some more preferences - he'd always rather have something bread-like than squishy. He can easily eat half a waffle for breakfast, in addition to a fruit puree + cereal. His favorite, however, is still old-fashioned plain Cheerios.

Charlie has been waving and clapping for a while, but I'm noticing he's figured out how to put it to good use. He loves people - he never shows any signs of stranger anxiety. So now when we're out in public, particularly if he's riding in a shopping cart (which he also loves), he gives anyone who smiles or talks to him a big smile in return. And often an excited wave too, hopping up in down in his seat and grunting to show his excitement. He likes the attention, that's for sure.

On the sleeping front, I'm happy to report that our boy is now sleeping later. Charlie has trained me well: three months ago I would have told you that 5:30 is waaaay too early to wake up, but after about 2 months of waking between 4:09 and 4:23 AM, 5:30 is GREAT! We've even had a few post-6 AM wakings - whoo hoo! Basically, I think Charlie was just reminding me I'm not really in charge. :)

We had a busy day yesterday, which is why I'm late posting this. I was also rushing through my usual birthday sign picture - perhaps you can tell! But fortunately, I had some help. While I was frustratedly trying to get Charlie to sit still for 2 seconds so I could take the picture, or at least not destroy the sign (which Zach made) - Zach was snapping away with my old camera. He got some great shots - and I think taught me a lesson about slowing down to enjoy the moment: