First Steps & No More Bottle

This weekend was one of big changes for little Elliot. In a nutshell, he started taking steps on his own AND gave up the bottle.

Without much coaxing from us, he is getting braver about venturing away from tables and the couch to take a few steps on his own. It's funny to see him work it out in his mind, "Should I just sit down and crawl? No, I'll try to walk." And then he does, usually with a smile on his face that says "Look at me!" Sometimes he loses his balance and falls on his bum, and sometimes he does the Frankenstein walk to wherever he is going. On Sunday he took about 6 steps in a row, by far the most he has taken yet. We cheered for him and he was very proud of himself. Overall though, he is still a crawler.

Also, we decided that we need to get him off the bottle soon so it wouldn't be harder to do later. Drew and I expected a little bit of a fight because he just started taking to the sippy cup last week. But Saturday morning when he woke up, we gave him his cup of milk and he hasn't looked back. He sips it with meals and snacks, and sometimes near bedtime while we read him stories. He hasn't fussed too much at naptime and goes right to sleep at bedtime. Needless to say, we are very happy it was an easy transition. We put about half fortified soymilk and half whole milk in the sippy cup and he seems to like it just fine.

As for his sibling, Dr. Polon confirmed today that we are indeed having a girl, and she has turned from the breech position to head-down. My blood pressure was normal, gestational diabetes test was negative, and I am up to 18 pounds gained. We have about 8 weeks to go until the due date.

Here are some tidbits on Elliot right now:

• He makes noises that sound like words and responses to what we say. It is easy to hear in the tone of his voice that it is the beginnings of language. For instance, when we say "dog" he says "dah," or when we say "keys" he says "dah," or when we say "phone" he says "dah." You get the idea.
• He takes one nap a day from about noon until 2ish. Sometimes it's only 1-1/2 hours. Sometimes it's 3 hours. At night he sleeps from about 7:30p to 7am.
  
• His favorite food is guacamole and he could eat heaps of it in a sitting.
• He is getting pretty good at feeding himself with a toddler spoon or fork.
  
• Mama and Dada bought him some new toys this weekend that are hits: flashcards for learning to name everyday items, and a yellow plastic Tonka-style truck with BIG wheels that spin.
• His favorite Baby Einstein DVD is "Baby MacDonald's Farm" and we can do anything to him while he watches it -- clip his nails, put his hand in plaster for his first-year handprint, or even give him a haircut.
• Puppets are still a sure way to make him laugh.
• He crawls on top of Abby while she sleeps on her bed. She either ignores him or licks his face and makes him laugh.
• Chasing balls around the house has become a favorite game. So has unrolling the toilet paper. In the morning while I am getting ready for the day he likes to take my makeup and hairbrushes out of the bathroom drawers and dump them into the bathtub.