So many milestones
I feel like I’m watching Raimi grow up in fastforward motion. Every day, he has something new to amaze and delight us with. The dancing, for instance — for awhile now, we’ve taken great pleasure in playing music for Raimi and watching which tunes make him really want to bust a move. It’s that toddler bouncing while holding onto something dance, but still, the little guy’s got great rhythmn.
And last week, while Kevin was out of town and it was just Raimi and me, I taught him to play the harmonica! He sometimes forgets which side to blow into, or even that he needs to blow and not just breathe like normal, but he’s getting the hang of it.
And he has this shape-sorting-rocketship toy, which he still doesn’t really understand — like, that squares don’t fit into circle shapes or that blue is the same as blue, but last week he figured out that he needs to hold the pieces a certain way for them to fit — he turns each piece carefully over in his hands until it’s facing the right way, and then tries to cram it into whichever hole is nearest, until someone points him to the right one.
And he knows how to get himself down off of a bed or a couch — feet first — although I’ve never let him do it without me standing there to help him get his sea legs. I’m so proud of each of these accomplishments.
The big ones this week are walking and sleeping. The walking thing has been going on for awhile, but he’s getting pretty good at it — he can do 6 or 7 steps in a row before crumpling down and going back to crawling. And just by holding onto one of your fingers, he can walk for long distances — even holding a toy in each hand and in one in his mouth, which for some reason makes sense to him. It makes me laugh.
The sleep thing is totally new. Without doing the whole “cry it out” thing, we got him to put himself to sleep last night! It took 45 minutes, during which he spent most of his time scampering around his crib and carefully examining the rails, walls, quilt behind the crib, blankets, and our arms. He also gave us many baby kisses (wet, open, toothy mouth with the sound “muh!”) and every time we laid him down in his crib, he popped back up to spaz out some more. But in the last 5 minutes, he totally settled down, and then fell asleep! And stayed asleep from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.!
When he woke up at 4, we were tired and let him come into our bed at that point, and I just lay there thinking, I’m exhausted, he’s nursing, so I’m going to be too distracted to fall asleep for another 10 or more minutes, and holy moly I’ve got a lot of work to do when I do get up… and I’m really going to miss this.