A Halloween trick

Mirjam mentioned this in her blog, but I wanted to write about it, too.

Last year in October I bought three pumpkins for a part of our Halloween decorations. One large pumpkin for me, one medium-sized for Mirjam, and one tiny pumpkin for the little baby nobody yet knew about. The three pumpkins sat in our living room for months next to the old chair--we never got around to carving them, and the drafty window helped keep them--but nobody ever caught on to the significance. I forgot about that until I read Mirjam's blog.

William the Destroyer

Today William was on the bed moving around, heading for the small bookshelf where we keep the phone, alarm clock, books, papers, and other things. I stretched my leg out to keep him from advancing forward and eating something. As he tried to climb over my leg, I noticed his back legs were not moving in unison, as they usually do when he's trying to get somewhere. They were kicking one after the other, as if he were trying to crawl! He's almost there. Oh, the humanity. It's time to do a serious child-proofing of the apartment.

Bedtime

I just put William to bed. I went through his normal routine. We all had dinner together about 6:30; William had some banana puree and avacado puree. Mirjam left for her orchestra class at 6:45, and a few minutes later I put William in his little tub to splash around in. I pulled him out after about ten minutes, and dried him off and dressed him, even though he prefers to be naked. I wrapped him up like a burrito in a couple of blankets, set him in his crib in our room, and read to him "Goodnight Moon."

As usual, he listened quietly all the way through, staring intently at each page. "Goodnight little house. Goodnight little mouse." I turned off the light in the closet, which I was reading by, and left the room, closing the door behind me.

A couple minutes later William started to make some noise, which soon turned into crying. Normally he falls asleep without a peep. I went in, picked him up, consoled him, re-wrapped him, and set him back in the crib after he was calm. A few minutes later he started crying again. I let him cry for a while, but after almost a half-hour he was only getting louder.

I picked him up, patted him on the back, walked around the darkened room, and after he had calmed down, I laid down on the bed, with him on my chest. He kept his head down and sucked on his thumb as he continued to whimper and sigh for a couple minutes. Mirjam called at 8:06 to check up on us. I rolled over to answer the phone, holding William close to me to keep him from looking around and finding something to play with or eat. After hanging up the phone we laid there for about fifteen minutes as he fell asleep with his head on my arm and his hand on my face.

Working up an appetite

Holy cow. Yesterday I saw William scoot across the room faster than I've ever seen him. He's still not officially crawling, but he got up on all fours and fell forward four times in a row to get to something across the room. Just up and down and reach. Up and down and reach. He especially likes cables and cords of any kind. Whether it's bookbag strings, a USB cable, or the phone cord, if he sees it, he wants to chew on it, and he's going to go after it.

We had to move all of Mirjam's giraffes to the top of the bookshelf because he had launched his assault on them. It's not his fault; they were right next to the bookbag. He also likes to eat anything that makes noise, including paper and krinkly plastic. If it moves or makes noise or is the remote control, he wants to chew on it.

Dinnertime

Today is William's first real food day. We bought him a high chair attachment so he can sit at the table with us now. Mirjam made him a small bowl of scrumptious rice cereal. Yum!

William was so excited to get his first taste of real food, he could hardly keep his hands away from the little baby spoon. One of us had to hold his arms down and the other had to aim the spoon carefully as William lunged forward with his mouth wide open for each bite. It was a lot of fun for all of us. Soon he'll be graduating to other real foods such as bananas and avacados. How exciting!

Moving day

William is officially mobile. He's figured out how to move in any direction. The last couple of weeks he's been getting steadily better at pulling his legs up underneath him as he supports himself with his hands. He then slowly rocks forward and back a couple times, and softly lunges forward, pushing off his hands and leaving them back and to his sides. Sometimes he still shifts backwards, but he's really getting the hang of it. He's even picked up on the ability to bring something closer to him this way.

If he's lying on his stomach and reaches for something that's out of reach, he methodically gets up on his hands, gently jerks his legs forward and softly lands on his chest, and he reaches out again to try to grab whatever's in front of him. If he can't reach it yet, he slowly gets back up on his hands and knees again and repeats the process enough times until he can grab onto it with his tiny fingers and quickly bring it to his mouth and chew on it.