Clapping Time!

Dane has been surprising us recently with many new talents, including sleeping through the night, going down without our attention, eating solid foods, rolling all over the place, sitting on his own and most recently, clapping on command. It's been great for us to have him starting to show us that he CAN sleep through the night, especially during these many weeks of colds we've already had. He'll be on a run of waking up at 3:30 or 4:00 am, and then will give us a full night or two in a row, which sort of allows us to catch up. We hope it continues to become more consistent as he gets over his current cold.

He's also started to eat solids at almost every meal, including many fruits and veggies, oatmeal, rice cereal, yogurt and even table food periodically. His tummy seems to be handling everything we've tried so far, which is excellent. As he's starting to eat so much more solid food, I tried my hand at making some baby food myself and was really happy with the results. We made peas, bananas, avocado, sweet potato and mango. All are pureed and frozen into ice cube trays, which I can then pop out and store for when he needs his next meal. I think in the long run it will turn out to be a lot less expensive than buying everything premade. It feels really good to pull out a bright orange cube of mango and know that I know exactly what he's getting and that it's healthy and tasty.

He's also started rolling a LOT, which makes us think he's working on crawling soon. He looks so frustrated when he can't get to a toy; we hope he'll figure out that crawling=more independence. But not too soon, as we'll have to baby proof our house, or house-proof the baby. We're not sure yet. Along with more movement comes more little bumps and bruises; he keeps rolling over onto hard/bumpy toys and not knowing how to get off them. We hope this will also pass. He's also hit his head a few times, as he's getting how to sit on his own, but is still dealing with the larger than normal weight of his noggin. It's fun to see him acting like such a big guy!

Finally, we've been working on clapping for a couple weeks now, and he's got it down. He loves to clap at anything that makes him happy, sometimes even when he's not. Tonight, Mark was on call, so Dane and I were doing some grocery shopping at Target. On the way through the store, we stopped in the Christmas tree section and Dane couldn't stop smiling and clapping; he got so many "aw cute"s that I think he's going to get a big head. Even bigger than it currently is;) Ha ha, mom and dad joke. We can do that, right?

Well, it's been wonderful to see his personality continuing to shine through. He delights everyone he meets, and we love spending time playing with him and making him laugh. He continues to be a super happy baby when not in pain. Even through the last five weeks of constant colds, he's been as funny as usual. We love it!