11 months old

Happy Birthday Brady! Wow- this is our last monthly birthday post! It makes me proud and sad to reflect on how far our little man has come in these 11 months. I'm sad because our baby will not be a baby for much longer. He's a little boy...that makes Daddy very happy (Brett's always loved toddlers and "little people you can reason with"), and it make Mommy a little sad (I Love babies). But it's still Lots of fun. Brady's a real character and it is simply awesome to watch him learn new things and be so proud of himself. He's just about got walking down...but will only walk to or between people with encouragement. When he needs to get somewhere, his preferred method of travel is crawling or cruising (or having us carry him...still. But I'm okay with that for now).

He has 7 front teeth- four upper and three lower ones, with the fourth lower emerging. As most boys are, the kid's a climber. Sometimes it seems as if he's not even aware that he's doing it. When I'm sitting near him next to the table or couch, he reaches for the furniture and starts climbing up me and using my leg as a step. I'm not sure what for...as if the view 4 inches up is that much better. But he likes it. He's become quite the StairMaster. About 2 weeks ago, Brett was playing with him and says, "Whoa. Check this out. Brady can go up the stairs. Cool." We're still working on safe landings though. Brady flings himself off the couch, bed, or whatever he's on with all the trust in the world that we'll catch him. We're working with him to get down stairs and from furniture safely on his tummy. Here are some of the outakes from this morning as I tried to get his 11 month shot. This one on the right captures Brady pretty well at this moment in time- his one hand scrunching and pinching Hippo's nose, the other ready to push off with while saying the exuberant "oooo" noise. And to think that last month I was nervous about his movement in the rocker. ha! This month after he'd crumbled the paper up (he still likes doing that), he began to check the rocker out in his explorer fashion. See how he's using the hippo for a leg-up and stepping on him to ascend? That's what he does to me when he's next to furniture.

Dude, where are you going?