8 Months and Counting

These couple were taken mid-late May, just days before he started crawling.

He had some good looking yoga poses (like this plank position) as he was trying to put it all together. You can't really tell, but his whole torso and legs are off of the floor here.

Father's Day 2009

This one is Adam on his first Father's Day. Jason had class, but when he got home Adam was ready to love on him in his "I love my Dad" t-shirt. Adam was crawling on and off of the dog bed in this shot. Cooper is so patient with Adam as he goes on and off the bed over and over.

Just crawling around, being a goof ball, as usual

It has been a busy couple of months since my last post. Adam started crawling at nearly 7 months exactly, and has been going, going, going ever since. The first few times he crawled across the room he did it with such enthusiasm and excitement it was hard not to laugh. As it turns out, he is a man on a mission. He did not enjoy his new found abilities for even one day before attempting bigger and better things...standing! It was as if his desire to get over to the table was what started him crawling. He crawled right over to the table and started working on getting up onto his feet. He mastered pulling himself up to a stand within a day or two. He actually loves these new skills so much that he practices them all of the time, even in his co-sleeper at night! I have awakened several times to find him standing, holding on to the side of his co-sleeper, giggling with excitement at what he is able to accomplish. Needless to say, we have started transitioning him over to his crib in order to avoid a night time fall. He is currently very busy working on all sorts of standing skills, such as squatting to pick something up and then standing back up, and moving around holding onto the furniture. The squatting and sitting from a stand he is great at. (Luckily, he also picked up the whole sitting from a crawl literally within a day of crawling. He's fearless. He would stop mid crawl and push hard off of the floor to get his bottom moving in the right direction. A couple of tries and he had it down with no problems.) The transferring thing is a little rough only because he has no inner sense of caution. He merely lunges for the next thing he wants to hold onto. The lunging thing doesn't give him much opportunity to practice his balance! He does, however, have a pretty good lateral move across the furniture. He has the general idea that moving on his feet is the next step, so his perfectly normal two knee crawl has recently turned into what we call the bear crawl. With this new crawl he uses his left knee and his right foot to propel himself around. It looks a little ridiculous, but he seems pretty excited to be using that little foot of his. Plus, this allows for him to get from a crawl to a sit by just pushing that foot off of the ground. One quick motion and he's back on his bottom!

Caught standing. He's so proud of himself! Don't know if you can tell, but he has dimples in his elbows and at the base of each finger!

Feeding himself can be messy. This is a puff stuck to his face.

His fine motor skills have improved greatly over the last couple of months. We started feeding him puffs at 6 months. He would skooch them around his high chair and pick them up handfuls at a time, getting about 1 out of 10 into his mouth. Now he is able to pick them up with ease, picking them up one at a time and successfully feeding himself at least 75-80% of the time. (Cooper is always near by to clean up the ones that don't make it in his mouth!) He can also turn the pages to his books, although he likes to turn to the front, which slows down the whole book reading process (his favorite books right now are Moo Baa La La La, and The Going to Bed Book). He has also recently learned to clap, and we are working on the waving thing (which generally comes out as arm straight in the air with fingers scrunching up and down toward himself).

I would say he is a definite momma's boy, in attitude and in looks! Actually, he is a big mix of the two of us. His head shape, forehead, eyes, and even ears are Jason, but his nose and mouth are me, which means so many of his facial expressions look like mine. He scrunches up his nose when he smiles really big, and even snorts at times (which neither J or I do, by the way). He finds himself quite funny, and will often go about his activities chuckling and snorting at himself.

Adam loves the water; big pool, little pool, bath tub...whatever works. He, of course, is not content to just sit and play. He crawls in and out of his blow up pool on the patio, navigates back and forth on the stairs of our backyard pool, banging anything and everything on the concrete around the pool, and tries to stand at every chance in the bath tub.

He loves bath time. Jason gives him most of his baths. Jason quotes "Finding Nemo" with the different bath animals (shark, fish, and seagulls mainly). Adam's going to know the whole movie before he's ever seen it!

Taylor over for a swim

I love it when he plays sitting on his knees like this. He does it all of the time! So cute!

He loves crawling in and out of the little pool. He's busy all of the time.

We LOVE naked swimming!!!

A few other miscellaneous details about life with Adam right now...when he nurses he either rubs his feet on my bare skin or he holds his toes. He loves to mess with the details/clasps of my nursing bra or tank while nursing. When he is sitting in his high chair he gets so excited to eat that he claps his feet together (his hands are busy stuffing puffs in his mouth!). If you are holding him when he see something or someone he loves he kicks his legs in excitement. He is hard at work on learning to throw a ball (busy practicing this one too!). I'm sure I have mentioned it in previous posts, but I really can't say enough how much he loves Taylor. He lights up every time he sees her. I have a strong suspicion that "dog" is going to be his first word, but we'll see. When Cooper walks up to him he makes a very distinctive "daw, daw" sound. Other than that he makes all of the normal babbling sounds, he loves blowing raspberries, and even makes a vrooming/blowing spit bubbles sound when playing with a car. (That would be Jason's influence. I don't have those boy instincts.) He loves imitating and is very curious about all of the sounds and facial expressions that we make. Although he is rough and tumble, he has a definite sensitive side, and doesn't like to be too far from mama!

I could go on and on. We are clearly at a very fun, and very busy age!