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We’re overdue for an update, so here are lots of pictures. My sister and her family were here for a week visiting, and Calvin got to hang out with all his cousins at once. We had a big gathering over at my mom’s, with my dad’s side of the family and some of our oldest friends. Here’s a shot of my mom’s yard, and you can see why she and Scott are Super Grandparents: pool, trampoline on the right, zip line in the background. That’s right, they have a zip line!
The kids had a blast!
Ione in the pool
So did the adults.
Grandpa Cropley
But Calvin prefers his water heated, thank you very much:
Kat helped him take out his aggressions on my cousin Matt:
He enjoyed seeing his Seattle cousins again:
Thelonious and Calvin
He thinks Uncle Jim is pretty funny:
And he’s going to miss all the squishes and love from Aunt EE:
Not to mention the attention of his cousins, who all want to hold him and play with him and entertain him:
Daniel, Ione, Bailey, Cal, Thelonious and Christian
In other news, Calvin continues to work on standing up unassisted. He can stay up for about 3-5 seconds without holding onto anything, although he’s not consistent yet. He actually keeps his balance better when he stands up on his own than he does when one of us is holding him. I want to get some video, but most of the time he does his best standing on the tile floor and I’m too busy hovering in fear that he will fall and crack his head open. I guess I need to relax a little – so far he’s done a very good job of falling safely back onto his butt.
He’s lots of fun – a sweet and happy boy.
We finally got Calvin to enjoy taking a bath – whew! He used to cry his head off the whole time, but now that he can sit up and play he really enjoys it.
And the best part is, it helps him go to sleep in the evening. Soooo…he gets a bath almost every night now. Hey, whatever works!
Calvin is exploring a ton, and crawling a lot more and a lot faster now. He’ll crawl from the tv room to our bedroom even though he doesn’t like to go through the hallway (cold tile), and will also go outside onto the deck although he has to psych himself up for awhile to get over the threshold (there’s a little drop – about 2 or 3 inches). We took him over to my grandparents’ yesterday, and he was going nuts exploring their living room. It’s hard to get far enough away from him in our small house to get a decent crawling video, but this one shows pretty well how his crawling has improved recently:
doneHe’s also really trying to stand up. He pulls himself up on furniture all the time, but he’s also been trying to stand up unassisted. We caught a decent attempt on video earlier this evening:
doneThis is Calvin’s new favorite pastime:
He’s pulling himself up on everything. He’s also just started sticking his tongue out all the time:
Not sure what that’s about, but it’s pretty cute!
Calvin’s new favorite thing is to pull himself up to standing – he’s very proud of his new skill. I think it’s time to take out the bassinet insert in his pack-n-play, or the kid is going to take a dive over the side!
Calvin hit the 6 month milestone this week. We are having so much fun with him right now. He’s definitely a little charmer!
He’s still working on his crawling. I thought once he figured it out he’d be all over the place, but so far that hasn’t been the case. He’ll crawl a short distance to get to something he wants, but he’s been more interested in climbing over stuff and trying to pull himself up on furniture (or people). This morning he pulled himself all the way up to standing in his pack-n-play, then smacked his cheek on the railing trying to get back down – poor baby! Just today he started venturing a little farther when he crawls, but we’ve been lucky so far as he’s taking his time.
He’s got a variety of toys now, but he shows the most interest in other stuff. Anything we use is interesting to him (of course!) – the camera, the remote, our phones. My iPhone battery was going down the tubes, so I got a new phone. We loaded the old one with some Calvin-appropriate apps (bubble wrap!) and let him play with it. He thinks he’s getting away with something!
He also really likes playing with the PVC pipes from his dismantled activity gym that Eric made – way better than any toys! But he does play with regular toys, too.
It’s almost wrong to call it “play” since he’s usually so serious! He’s investigating his surroundings and trying to figure everything out. But he has plenty of goofy moods, too. Eric is especially good at getting him laughing. I love this picture – he looks like a funny little elf!
He’s eating well and likes the solid foods a lot. We still have a ways to go with the sleeping, but we’re working on it. Ultimately we’re just grateful to have a thriving, healthy, happy baby.
