Even though I just posted the Seven Month Video on Tuesday, thought I’d also do a quick text post mentioning some of the new fun things Alex has been doing lately. Lets see…

• I neglected to post way back in early March when he first started feeding himself things like Cheerios and the like. He now likes a wide variety of finger foods and such of that sort, along with the other various sorts of mushier foods (and of course mother’s milk) that he’s had for quite some time.
• He’s moved from pulling himself up to a standing position for the first time to doing such at every available opportunity using everything from desks to the dog as things to pull himself up with, and then once up almost immediately starts letting go to see how long he can stand before he has to grab on again (or fall).
• He’s scooting all over the place. Not quite a crawl yet, as he’s not on all fours, and while it takes a lot of work and sometimes he gets frustrated, he is quite mobile and can easily get from one side of a room to the other if he really wants to. And of course if you give him a finger or two to hold on to, he’ll gladly walk all over the place (with that help) as well. That is just great fun!
• On Tuesday afternoon while I was at work and Brandy was at an appointment and Amy was taking care of Alex, he decided to jump off the changing table mid-change, resulting in a three foot fall to the floor and quite a bit of crying for Alex, and quite a bit of worry and stress for Amy (and the rest of us until we got home), but without any actual damage. As a side benefit, when we were at the precautionary doctor visit a couple hours later, he stood on the grown up scale by himself for the first time rather than lying in the baby scale.
• He is now also responding explicitly to a few types of requests he understands. So Brandy will say “Alex, stand up!” and he will pull himself up and stand and smile. And when you ask to pick him up he’ll put his arms out in the “OK, pick me up” position. And generally he is paying close attention to what we say, and responding in appropriate ways more often than not.
• On Wednesday Brandy reported this story: “He was in his high chair and having an snack. Then he looked at me and said ‘Ning!’ I looked at him and said, ‘You want ning?’ and he got excited and said ‘Ning!’ We had a conversation, and understood each other completely!” (Alex says “ning” a lot when he is really hungry and wants to nurse… not quite a word, but he has been consistent in how and when he makes that particular sound going back quite a bit.) And there are a lot of “DaDaDa” and “MaMaMa” and such, but they aren’t quite always in the right context yet, so I’m not prepared yet to say he knows what he is saying. :-) But ning? When he says ning he means ning. :-)
• He plays Peekaboo Barn on my iPhone and knows exactly how to make it do what it does: He carefully touches the iPhone screen to make it open the barn door and show the animals. Then he gets excited and smiles when the kid says the name of the animals. He also plays Laugh and Learn Peekaboo on our computers. Unlike the great care he takes with the other game, with this one he gleefully starts pounding keys on the keyboard as hard and fast as he can.

Anyway, all the usual stuff for this age I suppose, but lots of fun to watch the new things develop as they happen. Every day something new. He is learning and growing and figuring out this whole stopping being a baby and instead turning into a toddler thing very very quickly. It is just scary how fast time flies with this sort of thing. It was just yesterday he was born, right?