Four Part Harmony

Milo is really growing and has hit some huge milestones lately. I’ve been meaning to put together a post for a few weeks, but I was waiting until I got some good pictures or video of all of his fun new tricks. Unfortunately, I think that most of this stuff just isn’t very photographable, so I’ll just put up a few nice photos we’ve gotten recently even if they don’t go along with the story.

Accomplishment #1: Teeth! We’ve been saying for months now that Milo has been teething, but we never saw a hint of any teeth about to pop through. But within the last week his first tooth, one of the bottom middle teeth, finally broke through. It’s neighbor has subsequently broken through also, so we can officially say he has teeth (plural) now. (No picture of the teeth, you can hardly see them…this is a picture of Milo on the lawn in front of Reed College. We had a really nice sunny couple of days last week.)

Accomplishment #2: Crawling! Milo has been getting around somewhat for a while now. He wasn’t actually crawling, but if you set him in the middle of the room, he would somehow scoot and roll himself over to the couch or the edge of the rug pretty quickly. At some point in the last few weeks though, he started really pushing up on his hands and knees and trying to figure out where to go from there. At first he just got frustrated and didn’t really know what to do, then he got the hang of crawling backwards. Now he’s gotten pretty good at crawling backwards will routinely try to crawl himself under the couch or under the chair. He’s just starting to make a few tentative crawls forwards. You would think crawling would be easy to get a picture of, but so far I haven’t gotten a very good one. Here’s Anna scooting herself backwards under the yellow chair after Milo got himself almost all the way under there.

Accomplishment #3″ Talking! Well, this one might be a stretch, but we are convinced that he says “kitty” now. He is still really excited every time he sees Floydie, and always gets a big smile and reaches out with both hands to grab an ear or tail or handful of fur (we’re trying to introduce the concept of “gentle”). He usually sticks to simple, one syallable vocalizations, but several times now I’ve heard him deliberately spit out two syllables like “keh-dee”. sometimes it’s more like “teh-deh”, but still I think the intent is there. It’s kind of one of those gray areas, when do you actually give credit for a first word? I remember we finally agreed at some point that Anna’s first word was “moo”, but I seem to remember thinking there were some other almost-words she was saying right around the same time. The jury may still be out on this one until we get confirmation from a neutral observer, but I’m tempted to say that Milo’s first word is “kitty”.

Accomplishment #4: Waving! Now this one may be the most exciting one for me, because it just feels like such a direct communication. He won’t do it all of the time, but almost always if you give him a wave from across the room, he’ll give you a wave back. He does one of those waves like opening and closing your fist, and always with a big smile. Sometimes he even gets both hands going! It’s a huge thrill.

Well, I had a few other photos of some stuff we’ve been doing lately, but I think I’ll just leave them until next time (hopefully not several weeks from now), and keep this post all about Milo. He’s really becoming his own little person, and its amazing to notice the little ways that he’s changed the dynamic of our family life for the better.