Halloween!

Landshark! He's vicious.

Or not so much.

Neighbors!

Aran as baby Pubert from the Addams Family, Henry as Landshark, Jacob as baby chicken

Henry with Jacob

Trick or treat!

The zoo

A few months ago we got a family membership to the Pittsburgh Zoo, which is located in our Highland Park, about a five-minute drive from our house. We often go together on the weekends, and when the weather is nice Henry and I go at least once a week. My favorite thing to do is to take Henry on a weekday afternoon. The gates close at four and the zoo closes at five, so we usually get there sometime after three and it feels like we have the whole place to ourselves. Henry must like it too, because he's never complained. He laughs at the elephants and penguins, points at the gorillas and tigers, and seems to have a great time. Don't be surprised if "elephant" is his first word.

Polar bear, from underneath

Mama and baby sea lion, in the background

fish

Dance

A little dancing... just enough to momentarily make him forget how much he wants to hold the video camera.

Eleven months

Is Henry concerned that he is in some sort of underwater tunnel, surrounded by sharks? No, it's the woman vacuuming at the end of the hall that has him so worried.

Eleven months, folks. That's almost a year. Good grief.

Some things (because I doubt I'll have time for eleven things before he does something catastrophic) about Henry at eleven months:

• He's a dancer. As soon as he hears music, he bops his head and his body in a surprisingly rhythmic fashion. Video to follow soon.
  
• His interaction with the dog has really increased, to include: smiling at her when she comes upstairs, climbing in bed with her, imitating her bark with a really cute "ruff", and chewing on her tail. Though annoying at times, the dog is remarkably patient.
• In the morning, he usually sits on the floor and eats Cheerios (well, Joe's Os if we're being specific) out of a tiny cup while we make breakfast. This behavior, more than almost any other, makes it feel like we suddenly have a tiny person (rather than the baby we used to have) living with us.
• He has discovered stair climbing, and those of you who have been in our house know that we have a lot of stairs. Gates have been ordered.
• Like a good librarian's son, he loves his books. He'll often sit and page through books on his own.
  
• He stands really well on his own now, for minutes at a time. First steps can't be far off.
• Most importantly:
  

How can this tiny baby be a almost a year old?

Chompers

One thing Adam didn't mention in his last post - and really, how could he have forgotten? - is teeth. Henry has proved to be a pretty intense when it comes to teething. His first four teeth came in all in one week, back in the beginning of August. He got a little break, but in a few weeks the next four teeth started pushing through.

Right now, Henry has seven teeth - real, legit, all-the-way-out teeth. The eighth one is just breaking through, bringing with it a new pattern of night-wakings and thwarted naps. For his sake (and ours) I hope the next round of teeth don't show up for a bit.

punkin' patch

I feel like going to the pumpkin patch is obligatory if your child is less than one year old. At some point far in the future, Henry will be a teenager wanting nothing to do with going on hayrides with his lame parents. For now, we will sit you in the middle of some pumpkins and you will smile for the camera. Good, everybody's happy.

We're enjoying the fall weather this weekend, reminding ourselves that in a matter of weeks it may be a bit too cold to get out like this.

We missed our post to mark Henry's 10 month birthday, so I'll cover a few things now before we make it to 11. He has crossed some unmarked threshold from being a baby to starting to look and act like a toddler. This wasn't overnight, but he just feels older now. Now, when he's being bad, it really feels like he's being a little bit defiant and knows what he's doing is wrong. He is much more observant of us and is mimicking more and more of us. We've taught him the trick of asking him, "Where's Henry?" and he'll put his hands over his eyes, remove them and we'll say, "There he is!" and laugh. The funny part about it is that sometimes he'll do it REALLY fast, so we're just repeating the above phrases one after another. The other funny part is that he'll often miss his eyes, so he's staring at us through a finger or two with his mouth and nose covered. He gets it in theory anyway...

I recently bought a new commuting bike to be able to continue biking to work through the better part of the Pittsburgh winter. I at least partly based the decision on the bike I chose on being able to attach a child seat to it. We got Henry a helmet already, so we might take a ride or two on it (not on the streets, just trails) if we can convince him to not tear the helmet off his head.

Eating new foods continues to go well and he loves cottage cheese, Trader Joe's garlic hummus, grapes and just about anything we're eating when he isn't.

He is very mobile these days and I stayed behind him as he got himself up two steps to a landing and then about 5 steps more before getting tired. We have one gate, but we might need to invest in more. He doesn't seem to show particular interest in walking, but crawling is a given, pulling up on things is super easy and standing in place is going pretty well.

We have a Halloween costume picked out for him, but we won't spoil the surprise of what it is until closer to the real day.

Hope everyone is making the best of this fall weather!

Adam

Unintentional hiatus

Oh, hi everyone!

Sorry about the break. It's been a busy month - Henry started crawling, pulling up, and grabbing everything in sight around the same time that he essentially stopped sleeping. Could these things be related?

But rest assured, he's sleeping again. (Usually.) And still crawling and pulling up and grabbing everything. But also laughing, eating, mimicking our movements, voicing his displeasure, and being an all-around neat guy.

So. We'll be posting more often again, promise.

Love,
Us