putting stan's pajamas on is not as easy as it used to be...

he starts out in his daytime clothes

once his diaper is off he escapes

I put the pajamas over his head

now for the leg snaps

so far so good

just...a...few...more...to...go...

aaah. mission accomplished.

gettin' the hang of it

Stan is doing much much better at all of his skills (except his bow staff skills...). When he crawls, he uses both knees instead of using one and dragging the other leg behind. And when he stands and inches around on the furnature, he always holds on with one hand, and when he falls, he at least tries to fall on his knees or his nice soft diaper. He's doing better at sleeping, too. Last night we put him to bed at 8 after feeding him bananas, cheerios (actually, toasted oats), and about 3 oz. of a bottle. He slept until 7:30. It was great. He's also getting better at being handsome and loveable!

Stan(d)

Last thursday morning I went into Stan's room saw him completing a pull-up into standing position. The rest of that morning he was crawling from place to place pulling himself up on everything. The funny thing, though, is that as soon as he was standing, he'd let go with both hands and try to balance. I told this to Dawn and she said he'd stop after he fell a few times, so I bottled up all of my motherly instincts and let him fall down a few times.
A week and about 80 falls later (only a slight exaggeration) he's still doing it. Only now he's not just trying to balance. He'll crawl to the thing he wants to stand on, slowly pull himself up, let go with one hand and get his balance (he often waves with the hand which is not holding on, which is totally cute), then he'll turn and step out with one foot and let go with the other hand all at once. He thinks he can walk, but he cant. He tries all day, and all day long I stay within 6 inches of him so that I can catch him. Even so he falls all the time because he's always twisting around when he lets go. He has bruises all over his head. He's not even good at walking when we're holding his hands up or anything, so I don't know why he thinks he can just walk out into the middle of a room by himself. And I'm sure that if we were going to learn by falling, he'd have learned by now.

Showing Off For The Boy

Stanley has mastered the courtesy laugh already; children are obviously more savvy than they were before. Sometimes we play "jump out from behind a corner and say 'boo!' or some other word or loud noise," and he laughs and laughs. Then, in a brief moment, he gets tired of it. Instead of looking away and playing with something, though, he continues to watch, and when I jump out and make a fool of myself for the last time, he sort of smiles and exhales a little. It's the equivalent of a comedian nodding her head at a joke told by someone else, instead of laughing--as if to say, "I appreciate your effort. Your effort is valuable to me."

I guess that is all I'm asking for anyway--to know that Stanley enjoys our time together. He did seem to enjoy last night's dinner, when I got him to laugh numerous times saying (in a somewhat-impolitely loud voice), "Leek tart!" and "I love dill!"

Don't tell me stuff like that isn't funny.