pig noises and other happy sounds

Joseph's new favorite game is being tossed or swung in the air. He squeals and giggles. Also, he's started to do this thing where he is too excited to laugh, so he snorts and breathes quickly through is nose. It's hysterical. Scott and I can't get enough of it.

almost crawling, actually sleeping

Joseph has been working very hard on crawling. Over the past week he has slithered, crawled backwards, and scooched, but he cannot seal the deal on crawling. So sad.

Last week he figured out how to go from his belly to sitting up. Now that he has mastered this move it needs to be executed at all available opportunities. Especially mid-diaper change: he rolls from his back to his belly and then quickly sits up, clearly satisfied with himself. Quite a mess.

Also, weird and wonderful things have been happening in Joseph's crib. Like sleep. You just plop him down in there when he's tired and he goes to sleep. Sometimes he cries a bit, but mainly he makes tiny animal noises and passes out. This is after six and a half months of rocking, nursing, and bouncing him to sleep. Now all of a sudden he's way beyond all that baby stuff.

These two pictures were taken six minutes apart. He was yawning so I put him in the crib. Apparently he was not quite ready to sleep, so he sat up (ta da!) and played...

and a scant six minutes later...

he's unconscious. Without screaming. Nice.

I am going to eat this baby

Seriously. Can you blame me?





Those two pictures are in his little cradle/cosleeper thing, which is getting put away permanently this weekend because 1) he is working on pulling himself up and throwing himself out of it and 2) he's sleeping in his crib now. Of course, almost none of this crib sleeping occurs at night, but we'll settle for what we can get.



I really like how he puts his feet up in his stroller. He's like, "Check it out. I just sit here in the sun and they wheel me around. Crawling is for losers." Still, he has figured out how to commando crawl backwards but this just makes him mad, so we won't dwell on that.

good bye house

Tomorrow we move.



You've been good to us, house.

the wearing of the green

Today I had a helper while I was trying to baste the quilt. He helped by trying to grab the trees and flowers off the fabric. You can see that he's figured out how to get his knees up under himself, so I suppose crawling is on the way. Horrifying. Last week he discovered that he can push himself around on the floors: he lies on his belly and then pushes himself up and smacks the floor until he moves. Sadly for him, he can only go backwards this way, so he can never reach what he's trying to. But he can maneuver clear across the room, which must be pretty thrilling for a baby who just a few weeks ago couldn't even roll over.

In the last week or so he has also started to babble--he's making noises that sound like speech, albeit in some very foreign language. So now he has a whole repertoire of sounds: babbling, squealing, happy shrieking, raspberries, and the usual variety of cries. He makes quacking noises when he's trying to fall asleep. He starts with loud, confrontational-sounding quacks (like one duck if challenging another to a fight, I suppose) and ends with quiet moany quacks just before he falls asleep. Last night he didn't want to fall asleep so he happily quacked, blew raspberries, and bicycled his feet until he passed out. It was pretty much the sweetest thing I ever saw.

crazy town

I've been saying that when somebody comes to our door and is greeted by two frantic dogs and one frantic baby-wielding lady yelling at the dogs, it's like "welcome to crazy town." Of course, Indiana is the mayor of crazy town but the rest of the city's elected offices have remained vacant. Well it seems that the people of crazy town have spoken and elected a sheriff:




Isn't he authoratative? The bib was made by a friend, and I can't even stand how adorable it is. I'm not sure if you can see how Joseph's face is slathered with apple sauce, but trust me that it is.


Also, you can see in that photo our latest cloth diapering effort. It's been a week and so far, no major leakages. Hooray for us.

ducks

This weekend we went to the park, where we saw ducks, swans, waterfalls, the kind of little kid tiny amusement park that I dimly remember from childhood, and all kinds of happy families doing happy-family things like barbecuing and playing with dogs. We left our dogs at home (sadly, many outings are better when we don't include the dogs). Joseph seemed to enjoy watching things from his stroller (if by "seemed to enjoy" you mean "did not scream") , and Scott and I embarassed ourselves by not being able to tell a duck from a goose. Seriously, we need help sorting out ducks vs. swans vs. geese. Water fowl. Sheesh.

Also, any doubts I've had about the cuteness potential of baby boy clothing have been set to rest by Joseph's hat. He has matching overalls but he isn't wearing them because the combined cuteness would cause the other babies to despair.