What's New

It's been a busy week for Blake and it's only Tuesday!

On Monday he began discovering the fun of purposefully dropping things. At breakfast he carefully selected a carrot and released it out over thin air, then craned over the edge of his chair to see it on the floor. This activity has quickly become a part of every meal. 

The big event of the week is that Blakey got his first tooth!! I've thought for a little while that his bottom gums looked a bit whiter in front and sure enough -- right before Levi left for work, I lifted Blake out of his chair and caught a glimpse of a flash of white from inside his little mouth! It's kind of funny that he cut his first tooth after the first week of sleeping every night through. Hopefully all of his teething will go this smoothly! You can see in the photo below that he doesn't want anyone to see his tooth!

The final excitement this week (so far) is some progress in baby signs. We have been doing basic baby signs with Blake since about six months, with lots of support from Grandma during the week. For quite a while now he's shown understanding of "milk", "more", "eat" and "all done". It's pretty cute to sign "eat" or "milk" and watch him wiggle and whine in excitement. We have been adding more signs and eagerly awaiting the day that he starts to sign back. Just like when babies learn to talk, there's lots of trial and error with signing, as they test it out and add their own baby "talk." For weeks now he's been experimenting with moving his hands and you can just see him thinking about how he can communicate. Last week he started clasping and unclasping his hands in earnest, always when he seemed to want something or was simply very happy. I call it his version of "gimme." This morning we were looking through an animal picture book together and talking about all the animals. Almost every page had a dog, so we had lots of opportunity to say "doggie" and do the accompanying sign of panting with your tongue out. For a couple days now he's been making the sign with us, panting and then grinning, whenever we see or hear a dog. Today, after doing the sign for the first few doggies in the book, I pointed to another one and said, "there's a doggie! Look at the doggie!", and he did the panting sign all on his own! It is exciting to know that our son will be able to communicate with us before he is able to verbalize -- I'm so eager to get a glimpse into his thoughts and desires!

For anyone interested, we really like the book Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk.