Yesterday as my wife was cooking dinner, she showed me a few pictures that she had taken of our son during the day. Having not had an opportunity to transfer them from the memory card to our computer, I flipped through them on our camera. After I was done with the few from yesterday, I kept on flipping, starting from the beginning of the memory card which just happened to be when our son was born. I then proceeded to get through almost all the pictures we have taken of our son over the past 9 months. In short, the transformation that our son has undergone in just under a year is remarkable. From the first pictures of our tiny, little 8 lb, 21 inch baby to our now almost 22 lb, 28 inch baby, it has been quite the journey. Most remarkable about our son's transformation from a little lump of flesh into this high energy, non-stop moving child is his face and head. If you held up two pictures, one from birth and one from now, it would be very difficult to find the similarities between the two. When he was born, as with most babies, his head looked a little squished with puffy cheeks and a cute little nose. Now, his head has expanded, his forehead risen, and his face has developed features unique only to our son (with obvious similarities to both my wife and myself). It wasn't until I looked at the pictures that I realized just how quickly time has flown from last October to now. I guess I just find it amazing the changes and growth that a baby goes through in his/her first year. And our son isn't even done with his first year yet.
I will not even hazard any predictions about what our son might be doing in three months time as every day and week brings something new or improved. Yesterday, our son began eating meat. Not anything heavy, just chicken, but he ate it mixed in with his vegetables. Now that our son is going to be getting more protein, I figure it won't be long before he really starts growing and potentially walking. I know that I had guessed that our son would be walking by 9 months old. Well, that day has come and gone and our son is still working on developing his muscles and balance. He is getting much stronger and quicker at everything however. Now when approaching the stairs, he wants to hold someone's hands to get up them. After either crawling or guiding my wife or I to the stairs, he will then hold our fingers even harder and lift a knee on to the stairs, followed by his other knee (sometimes going right to his foot), then stand and repeat until he reaches the top of the stairs. Its simply amazing what he is figuring out how to do. In addition to wanting to walk everywhere, even if it is just in circles around our living room, he has started to want to climb almost everything. On almost everything he gets to, a gate, shelves, his crib or dresser, he tries to climb it. Its funny to watch him grab hold of something with his hands and then try to place his toes in or on something in order to lift himself higher. He hasn't quite figure it out yet, but I am guessing that he will probably start climbing around the same time he starts walking. In terms of walking, he is getting more daring with letting go and trying to figure the whole walking thing out on his own.
One of our son's new favorite activities is pulling things off shelves, out of drawers, or out of baskets of any type. Yesterday when I got home, I found my wife on the floor folding clothes with our son crawling around her. From what I got, he had taken to pulling the newly folded clothes out of the laundry basket and throwing them on the floor. My wife mentioned that she had been folding clothes for some time, and I could see why. It was just too funny to watch our son pull himself up to standing using the laundry basket, reach in, and launch clothes over and behind his head. The look on his face is priceless to, not as if he is doing anything wrong, but rather just a wide mouthed, wide eyed look as if to gauge our reaction to what he is doing. Seeing us laughing our buts off is probably reinforcing his antics, but hey, its cute so we are allowed to laugh. The same thing goes for clothes in his dresser drawers which he likes to pull out, or the DVD's, all of which usually end up on the floor every day. In addition to emptying baskets and drawers, our son is still on his exploratory track and with him now being able to reach more, we have begun to use the word "no" with him. To put it simply, he normally doesn't like the word, especially if it is in regards to an action that he is really involved in, like hitting the TV. Occasionally he will listen, but most times we have to resort to moving him away from the object after which he usually cries for a few seconds before moving on to something bigger and better. In any case, I am sure that the next 3 months leading up to our son's first birthday will hold big surprises for us. We are ready, as always, to watch our son grow and develop and will smile and laugh along the way.
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