Saturday, July 12, 2008

Airplanes in my kitchen

Mark turned 17 months old this week. He's walking very well now! Plus he learned to stand up from crouching on the floor, pick up objects from the floor, and otherwise move around easily. Today Chris and Mark were playing an airplane game - running around the kitchen in big circles, hands outstretched, making the "ooooo" sound.
Mark is absolutely fascinated by cars. He can spend a very long time walking circles around our little Rio, pointing to the headlights, doors, wheels. The other day I was gardening and he took my keys, walked straight to the driver's door, and tried to stick the car key into the lock! He also now puts plastic "coins" into the piggy-bank and can put a little toy pyramid together. He loves watching me assemble a tall tower out of stacking cups - you can just see him giddy with anticipation. Then I tell him "ok, now you can go ahead and demolish it" and he pushes the 3-foot tall tower ever so gently with his little finger and watches it sway and then crash with a loud noise.

We don't feed him baby food any more. He now eats our regular food, except we don't put any pepper or spices in it. Surprisingly, he mostly loves it, even the veggies (especially the veggies, I should say). Tonight he even ate a salad with olives, artichokes, and capers and absolutely loved it.


The pictures here are from the 4th of July weekend. We didn't do much on the 4th - went to the Fairgrounds for some ice-cream and music. But we got there way too early for the music. So we had to settle for just ice-cream, some root beer, and a few minutes in the misting tent for Mark. The next day we went to Durham for the 27th annual Festival for the Eno. It was very nice - we walked around, listened to a lot of great music, ate fair food, played games and dipped Mark in the river.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

One Giant Step...

Mark is walking! I mean, he's finally walking and standing un-assisted (on his own, without using any kind of support). This is very exciting. I mean, he's been cruising since he was about 12 months old. So we've waited for this for a while. But it's great so far. Our phys. therapist, Tom, worked with Mark and finally got him confident and strong enough to step out on his own. Thank you, Tom!!! We'll post a video and some pictures later this week.

Here is the video (actuall, two videos).