Stuff Our Almost-10-month Old does

• Yesterday, he waved in response to someone waving at him for the first time! He waved at his daycare provider when I picked him up at the end of the day, then when Seppo came home, he waved at him, and he waved good-bye this morning to both of us in turn. Amazing.
• He stands every single minute he can. Crawling is just a means to an end, and the end is standing. He crawls over to a wall, to tables, to chairs, anything higher than ground level to stand.
• Just a couple of days ago, he mastered clapping his hands together forcefully enough to make that, er, clapping sound! He was so pleased with himself, and kept practicing throughout the day.
• He can pat his own mouth to make “wa-wa-wa-wa” noises now, instead of just making the noise when someone else pats his mouth.
• If you stick your tongue out at him, he darts his tongue in and out and makes his signature “yodel” sounds in direct response.
• He can now pick the book he wants to have read to him out of a group of books, and flip pages one at a time. He seems to do this if he thinks I’m going too slowly! Ha! It may seem like he might be picking a book at random, but if you keep reading a different book, he will keep holding, moving, and looking at the book he picked instead of paying full attention to the alternate book, and then pay close attention when you pick the book he wants.
• He recognizes and prefers babies’ faces and voices in books and songs. His two favorite books seem to be one that has photos of baby facial expressions and one that features a baby’s cartoony face very prominently. This third favorite might be Hippos Go Berserk! I just bought two albums of children singing, and he couldn’t stop laughing at one of the albums. It was so weird and compelling. 😀

The biggest change is that not only is he gaining new skills, he’s initiating play now, whereas he used to only respond to our play initiation. For instance, he’ll stick his tongue out and look at you, waiting for you to stick yours out. Then if you do, he’ll start his yodeling.

He laughs at the drop of the hat. Anything you do that is slightly out of the ordinary makes him crack up. He spends a large part of his days with us just laughing in delight at all the surprising, crazy things the world contains. He makes me see the hilarity in tiny things and enjoy the world more.

I know there are all sorts of studies about couples being happier before having kids, but with our baby, aside from sleep issues where we get too tired sometimes (which is admittedly HUGE at times, due to a lowered ability to deal with stress), our lives have been filled with face-splitting grins at the awesomeness of being his parents. I can’t believe how much he’s progressed since the last update a mere 3 weeks ago.

Here is a cute little video of the babybear experiencing his first train set and the absurdity of a train going off the rails:

And don’t worry about anything you see in the background; we aren’t done clearing out that room and the outlets have already been covered. Just enjoy his bubbling laughter! 😀

Here’s a pic of him at at friend’s house, sitting on a rocking caterpillar:

Here’s a family photo from when my mom visited while the little bro was here. My cousin visited us despite his hectic schedule.