We still go to a park almost every day. In addition to playing on your picnic blanket you can now go in the swings! You love it. I clip a teething necklace to your sleeve and you chew away blissfully while I snap a bunch of photos with my phone.
You started swim classes this week! You just love the water – we went to the pool at Welles Park this summer and you are always clamoring to get in the fountain at Juniper Park – so I had a good feeling when I signed you up. The instructor even commented on how comfortable you were in the water. Plus, your bathing suit makes you look like a tiny strawberry.
At home, your favorite thing to do is to pull up to standing with your hands on the windowsill. If there’s something exciting outside (a train, a dog playing in the neighbor’s yard) you’ll pause and watch but otherwise, you are off! You scoot along the windowsill to the couch to the coffee table and then slowly lower yourself down to a seated position. Then you crawl back to the window to start the circuit again.
You have two modes now: on-the-go and asleep. You rarely sit still – taking these monthly photos is becoming a little trickier as you want to stand or sit up. Photos of you placidly on your back next to the chalk heart were NOT going to happen.
You mimic me more and more now and it cracks me up. You stick your tongue out at me or blow raspberries. At Hamlin Park the other day, you heard a motorcycle drive by and you turned towards the road and blew a raspberry. I just know you were copying that famous Harley sound you heard, my little mockingbird.
You almost fit in high chairs at restaurants (the baby seat in shopping carts still overwhelms you). Your grandparents came to visit for lunch and I tied you to the high chair with a scarf and you sat there, chewing on a pickle, like you’d been dining out all your life.
Your number one nemesis is still public changing tables. You shake with fear when I take you to public restrooms (so I don’t. Not sure how this plan will go down in the winter when I can’t change you outside at the parks.)
You eat everything we serve you (lots of vegetables, mostly, with some chicken) but you adore these slim teething biscuits. They are made with rice flour and are basically thin rice cakes but you gobble them up. They work to distract you in that crucial time right after I’ve buckled you in to your high chair but don’t yet have your food ready. You drink water from your cups and recently figured out your straw cup – that one is always your first-choice water receptacle when it is clean (and when my water bottle isn’t offered). You insisted it be a prop in this month’s photos and we gladly complied.