The first development from many, many weeks ago was that Billy began crawling faster and faster and faster until finally he was crossing the entire house in what seemed like under a minute. Most of the time when he turns into Speedracer, you know it because he starts making all of these really excited noises and giggling as he's heading for something in particular. But since whatever he's heading for is often behind a wall on the other side of the house, I have to wonder if he's moving along on memory and actually beginning to create a mental map of the layout of the house. For instance, he knows exactly how to get to the dog crate from the living room, which is a room over, around a corner, and past a desk. Of course, with the excessive dog hair that tends to be around a dog crate, it seems that Billy likes the crate much more than his Mother likes him liking the crate. Anyway...
The next major development was that soon after Christmas, Billy began pulling himself into a standing position. The first time happened in the bathtub as Antoinette was giving him a bath. He just grabbed the side of the tub and stood up. She put him back in his giant inflatable rubber duck and he just stood up again. Over and over he did this until finally the bath was over. Before long, he was grabbing onto tables and foot stools and standing up on those. Within two days, he was adding couches, walls, beds, and bookshelves to the mix. And most recently, he's added Mom and Dad to his climbing objects. It wasn't long before we would find him standing in his crib every time he woke up, which then progressed into putting a sleepy baby down, only to have him stand up and not realize how to get back down from a standing position, so instead, he would just cry. After about two to three days of needing to go back in and without saying a word, just laying him back down, did he finally stop standing when he was put to sleep initially. Thanks to my sister Christine for helping us out with that one and not allowing us to break from the good habits we had instilled in him so far.
Billy had been kneeling on his own in the middle of the room for quite awhile now, so it wasn't much of a shock when he finally started to stand on his own, but what was a shock to us was how fast that standing turned quickly into cruising. Within a couple days of learning to stand, before he had even mastered standing on anything and everything he came into contact with, Billy began to take a step or two along the edge of the furniture. Now, he's up to about four to five cruising steps, and when combined with his ability to stand up on anything and crawl at an impressive clip, we've now seen just about everything in our home that's three feet or lower off the ground come into his domain. Baby proofing once again requires an expansion to meet the baby's growing realm.
So once Billy began to show off some of his cruising moves, we figured we'd see if he had figured out how to take steps yet. So Antoinette took him by the arms and stood him up. In the past, this had resulted in "steps" that resembled a baby in a jumper. If you walked him, he would drag his legs or simply pick them both up like he was jumping. But now, with a few cruising steps already under his belt, Billy began walking with the help of someone holding him by his hands. He can now take about a half dozen or more steps toward something on his own, one foot at a time. My guess is that by the next blog update, hopefully coming out at the end of this month, Billy will have taken his first step. He's a little over 8.5 months old, so maybe by 9 months or so, he could begin to take those important first steps. We're not sure when Antoinette started walking, but my brother and I were around the 10-11 month mark, so he's probably right on track with that.
Billy's development certainly goes beyond changes in his preferred means of locomotion though. His verbal skills have also seen a bit of a boost. We've long suspected his first word was "dada", but we were never sure that he quite knew what he was saying. To be honest, I'm still not sure, but he does smile when you say it back at him, unlike a lot of words, so of course I'm hoping he's putting it together. Either way, he's added another word to his vocabulary and we're really not sure where he picked it up from. But Billy now says the word "baby". Its pretty clear what he's saying, but again, its highly unlikely he knows what it means. Perhaps all of the talk between us about "baby" this and "baby" was being picked up and just now, its being tried out on his own tongue. On her first extended visit with the little guy, my Mother, who Billy is being taught to refer to as Nanny, taught him quite quickly to use his hands to make all sorts of noises that he still makes today, weeks after she left. Flipping his lips around to make motorboat noises and things like that. His Mother keeps trying to work a "mama" out of him, but he just recently started muttering something that sounds like "mamamama". I guess they'll keep practicing.
Playing games with Billy is a lot more fun these days. With his increased mobility, we've found quite a few games that he likes to play. Classics like Peek-a-Boo really get him laughing and he loves Hide and Seek where you sit him down anywhere that he can see you and then run out of view. If you put one little part of your body where he can see it, like a finger around a corner, he'll start laughing and giggling and come bombing around the corner to find you as fast as he can. He's also started anticipating when his bottle is being made and following you into the kitchen and then following you back to the living room to be fed, sometimes crying at how horrible it is that he's being asked to come to where he is going to be fed instead of being carried. His understanding of Object Permanence is there now and he knows that when an object is covered, he just needs to uncover to find that object. The object hasn't gone away, but just hidden. He also enjoys games like knocking down well stacked blocks (this is some sort of irresistible urge since he'll stop whatever he's doing to cross the room to knock them down) and taking things out of an object that you've put them into, such as putting his toys into a basket, only to have him pull them out again. He's in a stage where maximum disorder is the ideal.
Since the house is basically baby proofed, we have allowed Billy to take off on his own for brief ventures of 3-5 minutes (with 30-60 second peaks by Mom and Dad, just to double check that he's not into something he's not supposed to be into). Of course, Billy doesn't know that Mom and Dad are not far away and thinks he's off exploring the vast unknowns of the house, but that's part of the fun for him. Its often the obscure and seemingly boring objects that he finds the most fascinating. Paper, a book, or a plastic storage bin. Anything new to feel its texture, or see how far he can bend it, pull it, or twist it. Everything is a test of the maximum an object will allow under his increasing strength. How hard can I bang this toy into this wall before it breaks, etc.Billy's balance is also greatly improving. He's always had what we thought was good balance for a kid of his age, considering he's been kneeling without support in the middle of the room for what seems like a couple months, but we really had a chance to put that improved balance to the test now that his Grandma bought him a fancy rocking horse for Christmas, complete with animatronic head and tail movements, horse and hoof noises, and some sort of system that prevents it from falling over (not sure how that works). Well, it wasn't the horse falling over we were concerned with when we put Billy on. It took only a couple of times on the horse before he was able to balance himself, pose for pictures that his Mother took of him, and generally "ride" the horse. When my parents were in town for Christmas, they bought him a truck that he could ride along on, complete with nursery rhyme songs he can listen to. Not only can Billy balance himself on that, he also picks his feet up so they don't drag, and figured out how to push the buttons so that the songs play while he's riding (being pushed). And then there's the dancing. Certain types of music seem to get his head bouncing from side to side and body and hips swinging to the beat. I suppose that's all part of being able to balance, but either way, its pretty funny to watch him because he seems to be oblivious to the fact he's doing it.
Billy's growth is a bit of a mystery. We know his hair is growing. Especially on the back of his head as he's getting an interesting bird shape pattern that is growing in faster than the rest at this point. He looks bigger to us, but according to the scale at home, he's lost a half pound in the past month and a half. Clearly he looks bigger, so I'm chalking that one up to my method of weighing him which basically consists of me weighing myself twice, and then getting back on the scale with him twice. A little subtraction and there you have it. Unfortunately, its not always the most accurate, but since he can't walk, its the best we have. Billy goes to the doctor on Monday, so we'll hold off until then with the next height/weight measurement and an update on what percentile he falls into.
Finally, the last two points on the physical development section of this update, are Billy's beginning of his potty training and his permanent shift to a two nap per day sleep schedule. First, on the potty training front. We know that Billy is very far off from being potty trained, but since he's naked in the bathroom while we get his tub ready, we figured it could hurt to plop him onto one of those kiddie potties while his bath water is warming up. This is more or less the first stage of his potty training, which is developing a comfort level with sitting on the potty seat itself. We don't expect him to use it and as a matter of fact, in the dozen times he's been on it, we haven't seen any evidence that he has, but our hope is that when the time comes to really focus on making that transition, he'll be comfortable enough in sitting on that without pants on that it can make things a little easier for him. We'll see how it goes. On the sleep schedule change, Billy's shift was fairly quick, but he did hit a rut where he decided that he was going to wake up in the middle of the night. We don't think he was hungry, but thought that maybe he had a little early stage separation anxiety setting in. After spending this much time developing him psychologically so that he will sleep through the night, not be afraid to sleep in his room, and not need a whole lot of prep to get him to fall asleep initially (3 minutes until he's out cold in his crib on average), we figured we didn't want to break those good habits, so we fixed this by simply going in there at night, not saying a word, and just laying him back down. If he fell back asleep after once or twice of doing this, then problem solved. If not, then we fed him a small bottle and put him down again. No lights, few words, and out cold. In one week or so, crisis averted and he was back sleeping through the night.
When it comes to teething, Billy hasn't added additional teeth other than his two bottom front teeth. It won't be long before a few more break through though as his drooling, fussiness resolved by chewing, and gum sensitivity seem to be increasing. We're expecting his top two front teeth relatively soon, but either way, we've begun brushing what he has nightly before bed as part of his bedtime routine. Another interesting event took place while the family was in town. Basically, everyone got sick. Real sick, including Billy. As a matter of fact, he got his first fever ever, which broke relatively quickly with some Tylenol. Billy only had to tough it out for a day or two before he seemed to feel much better, but with unseasonable freezing conditions in one of the worst winters in North Florida recorded history, we're trying to make sure he doesn't have a round two anytime soon.
Billy's diet has changed quite a bit over the past six weeks, as well. With an improved pincer grasp, he's capable of picking up the most minute items now. A skill he has perfected in trying to eat everything he can find laying in the carpet or on the tile floor. Even if that means eating a piece of paper with blue market on it and coloring his whole face and mouth that color, finding dead grass to eat, or some other piece of fuzz we have to dig out of his mouth. As he begins to advance to Stage 3 foods, he has also began eating small pieces of all kinds of foods, from fruits and vegetables to pastas and cheeses. He's even getting some snacks like yogurt, baby cookies, and rice wafer things that look disgusting. He's also practicing with a sippy cup filled with juice and some rubber eating utensils.
To round out the blog, I have to detail out Billy's first Christmas. This year, Antoinette and I were host to my parents and my brother and his family, which consists of his wife, their three children, and their three dogs. We had a fantastic time and Billy seemed to be in heaven with all of his older cousins running around. My brother's little ones are five, two, and one and unfortunately for Billy, they can all walk while he was stuck crawling. I imagine that's frustrating because back on Thanksgiving, the youngest was mostly crawling while Billy was stuck rocking back and forth and not going anywhere. Now he can crawl too and she's one step ahead again. Story of your life with that one, pal.
Anyway, the Family came in for the holiday and since the weather has been quite funky down here this year, they were handed an assortment of weather conditions from lows in the 30's at night some nights to highs in the 70's during the days on others. There were scattered showers, some cloudy days, and others with plenty of sunshine. The beauty of each was that whatever we were experiencing down here, it was about 30 degrees colder in Chicago and about 20 degrees colder in Delaware. Both locations were coming off of some of the biggest blizzards of the year.
So the family was down and we all had a wonderful time. There was time planned for trips to the zoo, a nice night for the entire family to head off to dinner together, a large family spread on Christmas Eve, family present opening time on Christmas Day morning, time at the parks with the kids, and even a trip to Disney thrown in to see the lights for my brother's family and my parents (my family was out due to a late arriving illness to Antoinette and Billy). The only item we had to cut out of the planned trip was a day planned for the beach when the temperature was about 10 degrees colder than what we anticipated for earlier in the week. But who really wants to go to the beach when its 57 degrees, cloudy and windy anyway? Maybe next time.
Billy spent Christmas opening presents with his cousins and playing with not only his own toys, but toys meant for kids two and three times his age. It turned out to be great time spent together with the family that we just don't get much of these days due to the way the family has spread out all over the country. Especially since there's a good chance we may not be back to Chicago in 2010 depending on how things shake out.
On a final note, I had to include pics of the quilt that my Mother made for Billy over the Thanksgiving break. Its an Ohio State quilt that clearly works toward the conversion of the little guy becoming a Buckeye. Maybe his next set of words will be "Archie Griffin" or "Woody Hayes". I'd be happy if he just said "The Shoe". Together we got to watch the first Ohio State Rose Bowl victory in quite some time and the first BCS victory for our Buckeyes in what seems like forever. I expect next year's preseason ranking to put us in the top 5, but that's another story. Back to the Baby Blog. Before you know it, I'll have this kid yelling "I-O" every time I yell "O-H"...
Anyway, that's a wrap on the blog for this week. I'll try and get another update on here by the end of the month and check back in the next day or two for a long awaited video. Until then, take care and Happy New Year...
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