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