Benjamin

Our little boy is getting big quickly! He's busy, busy, busy these days. I'm afraid, since I haven't been keeping up on the blog, we're not recording his milestones very well. So, this post is for Benjamin - to remember the general and specific times he's done particular things.

We were on "vacation" or rather, a trip, to the Northwest May 11th through the 25th. During that time, Benjamin...

started sitting up with confidence and without always falling backwards on us (5/13)

began crawling with real crawling mechanics (5/15)

waved in response to another person's waving (5/15)

ate Joe's Os all by himself! (5/16)

learned to transition from sitting to crawling (5/21)

Since being home Benjamin...

broke tooth #3 through, though it remains just a small white dot on his left side on the bottom (5/26)

broke tooth #4 through on the top left (6/2) and is pushing and pushing on tooth #5 on the top right

began pulling himself up to standing (5/26) and has since had many, many bumps and bruises each and every day

has improved pulling to standing so much that he's up and about and working hard at "cruising" all around everywhere (6/4). He stands in his crib, pack-and-play, the bottom of his high chair, people's pant legs, his activity table, the couch, the bathtub - everywhere!

is babbling like a champion (6/3), working on his "da da da"s and "ma ma"s along with various "oooo"s and "aaaah"s and "la la la"s

continues self feeding, eating rice rusks, Joe's Os, mashed banana chunks and watermelon shreds by the fist-full (6/4)

started sleeping through the night!!!!!! As in, 8-9 hours!!!!! (5/29) HOORAY!

likes to crawl/climb up and over things. His favorite "obstacle" at the moment is the dog's food tub. He climbs up on top and sits there babbling away on his hands and knees. Sometimes he climbs off the other side and sometimes he fusses until someone helps him down. He has definitely fallen off face-first a few times, but he is learning to keep his elbows locked as he heads off the other side and wiggles himself side to side until he can get one knee down at a time. (6/1)

wants nothing to do with the cupboards and "toys" Ella liked at this age, but loves any toy Eleanor is playing with, loves the animals and loves to crawl to people. He also seems quite attracted to books and pulls as many off the shelf as possible. (6/2)