Ladies and Gentlemen:

I recorded this video vertically and my camera isn't able to flip it around (honestly, I TRIED!) so I uploaded it to a photosharing website in hopes I could edit it there. Obviously, I couldn't. Anyway, this is video of Ian's first time walking. Seriously. He's been able to shuffle along for about a week but lacked the confidence to do any more than a few steps at a time before going back to crawling. Today, something just clicked in his head and he was trying it more and more on his own as the day progressed. I feel quite certain that he'll be primarily walking by the weekend.

My baby! Fourteen months old tomorrow and only just now beginning to walk. I never thought he'd take this long so I'm so happy he finally did it.



While I'm bragging about my baby boy I may as well write about some of the other completely amazing things he's been doing this week. He finally cut his first molar. He basically had one day last week where he was a little crusty and not really himself. I chalked it up to a minor cold that's been circulating our house. By Sunday I could feel it with my finger and by today he had discovered it and is chewing everything on that side of his mouth - I would assume because it's easier using one molar than no molars on the other side!

Ian's also been chatting up a storm and coming up with new words every single day. He can say:

• Mama
• Dada
• BooBoo (that's our fat cat's name)
• Kitty (titty)
• bird (teet, for tweet I guess)
• cat (mao, a meow obviously)
• dog (oo, oo, for the bark)
• fish (smacks his lips)
• dinosaur (roars)
• more (ma)
• up (pah)
• down (da)
• juice (sss)
• bath (bah)
• hot (h)

When Ian's looking at a book on his own, he'll hum to himself, almost as if he's actually pretending he's reading. The first time I watched him do it was over a month ago but I never really put together what he was doing. Now he'll head over to the book basket, flip through looking for a particular one (Fuzzy, Fuzzy, Fuzzy is his favourite) and park his bum on the floor and hum as he turns the pages. He stops humming briefly while he carefully closes the book and then when he opens it back up to the first page, the humming begins again.

Shaun has been much more of an influence on Ian's playing than I ever though he would be. I know the dinosaur roar has come from Shaun and when Ian's pushing around a toy car he'll make car sounds. Shaun didn't do anything like that until he was much older, likely because he didn't have someone older than him showing him what to do. Ian has one particular bulldozer that will propel itself across the floor after you push it a couple times to crank it up. Ian plays with that bulldozer the most and makes engine sounds while he's playing. Even if he walks by a toy vehicle on the floor, often he will make an engine sound. Almost like he's acknowledging, "that's a car."

AND he feeds himself! With a spoon!! With only a minor mess!!! He actually gets MAD when we try to use the spoon or fork to feed him. The only way to convince him is to allow him to use his own spoon and then shovel a bite in here and there with a second spoon. That doesn't work for long though before he clues in and clamps his lips shut or reaches for the second spoon and demands we hand it over.

By far the very best thing he does these days is when we ask him where the baby is living. He right away comes over to me and points to my belly. If we ask him to kiss the baby, he kisses my belly. Of course, there's no way he actually understands that there's literally a BABY in there but it's cute nonetheless!

He's going to seem like such a Big Boy when the baby arrives at the end of the year.