Thursday, July 16, 2009

He walks!

Nathan is finally walking around, unassisted! For the last few weeks (or two months?) he has been happy to walk around just about anywhere - as long as he could hold your hand. If you slipped out of his grip he would go at most two steps before he realized what was happening, then he would squeal and drop down to a crawl. Today though, a visit from his Aunt Sandra was enough to distract him from the fact that he was walking, and it finally clicked!



Sunday, July 12, 2009

Learning Explosion



It seems like Nathan has been learning a lot of stuff in the last week. I was showing Nathan parts of his body and when I would ask him where his head or tummy is he would point to them. Sometimes he will go a little overboard and keep hitting his head with both of his hands. It looks like the Home Alone pose, but on his head. I asked him where my nose was and he pointed to it. I couldn't believe how he picked this up so fast. I am now working on trying to get him to point to other body parts.

Nathan has learned two new signs. He now knows what "cheese" and "all done" are. He does a modified version of the sign for cheese because he can't quite get the hand movements for it. It is funny when he does the sign for "all done" because sometimes he is just doing it so that he can swing his arm around even when he isn't really done :) For the most part he knows what it means though.

Nathan has officially said his first word. We were playing with his bubbles and I kept saying the word bubbles and then he started saying "buba." I thought that it was cute how he was trying to mimic me, but then this weekend when he would see either the bubble juice or the bubble machine he would say "buba!" I couldn't believe that he was actually trying to say bubbles to the right thing! He has been saying "mama" and "dada," but he will say those while babbling and not to us. When he does want us he will use those words, but I am not counting them as his firsts because he doesn't use them consistently. He has also been trying to mimic sounds that we make and I am sure that his vocabulary will be growing a lot soon. It is kind of funny how all of this stuff happened while Christopher was in Costa Rica :).

Nathan also got in tooth #5! This tooth has been coming in forever and it finally broke through the gums on Saturday. I am really happy that Nathan doesn't get super grumpy when he is teething.

Nathan also took a few steps on his own. The steps he took (all three of them!) were from one piece of furniture to another. He'll walk anywhere as long as he has one of our hands to hold on to, and will usually take two or three more steps if we let go. He loves to walk, but will only do so holding our hand or finger (he has yet to get up by himself and start walking though). If we aren't around he will find anything to push around and use as a walker. He seems like he is close to walking, but I know that he has to try and stand up on his own and he hasn't done that yet. Both Christopher and I don't mind that he isn't walking yet because we can keep better tabs on him :) He does like to climb all over stuff and seems pretty fearless.

That is about all for now!

-Heather

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Nathan is waving!!!!!



Nathan has finally started to wave to people when you say goodbye or hi! He doesn't do it all of the time and it is a very sloppy wave, but it is one! He waves with his whole arm up and down and fast :) We were in the parking lot and this lady stopped in her car to let us cross and I put out my hand to say "thanks" and Nathan started waving to her! She started laughing and waving back! I am glad that he is finally waving. Now I just have to get him to start clapping :)

Aren't Nathan's teeth cute? I actually think most things about him are cute :) I do think that he is getting cuter as he gets older. His appearance has changed a lot in a couple of months. I was looking at some old pictures of his and I can't believe how much he has changed. Go to gallery.christopheraedo.com and you can take a look at our bazillion pictures we have!




Nathan LOVES to eat!!! We had heard that babies/toddlers usually get really picky about what they eat after they turn a year, but that is not the case with Nathan. He eats about anything (he has even had a little taste of some cat food that he got to before we could get to him) and likes it all. He also eats a lot! I think that he gets that from both sides of the family :) One of his first signs was for "cracker" and he does that sign all of the time. He will crawl over to the fridge and look up at the crackers and do the sign. He also loves to stuff his face with food. It is amazing how much food he can cram in his cheeks. In the above picture I had some chips on the table and I didn't think that he could reach them and I was in the next room and I heard something fall and I went in and I saw that he had pulled the chips off of the table and was scrambling to eat them as fast as he could before I could get to him or the chips. He is a great eater and you can definitely tell by his chubby little legs!

We had a nice 4th of July weekend! Rhonda ended up feeding us two nights in a row and we are very thankful for that!!! We didn't watch any fireworks show, but we think that next year we will keep Nathan up so that we can watch some show somewhere. This coming week Christopher is going to Costa Rica for work and I am really jealous that we don't get to come! We will definitely miss him around the house!

-Heather