Calvin turned 10 months old at the beginning of the month, and he’s a busy, busy boy. He rarely sits still – he’s constantly exploring or carrying things from place to place. He still loves opening and closing doors and he’s showing signs of becoming a climber. We figure we need to take advantage of all that energy and teach him to do some chores.

Something finally clicked and all of a sudden he’s feeding himself all kinds of finger foods – cheerios, yogurt melts, banana snacks and so on. It’s made it a lot easier to get through a meal, as we can put him in his high chair with some snacks and he stays entertained while Eric and I both eat. No more eating in shifts! Woohoo!

It also seems like his overall food intake has about doubled in the last couple of weeks. He slimmed down a bit when he started walking, but he’s putting some weight back on and his little belly is getting rounder. 

He still loves bath time, and since he loves to do whatever Eric is doing, sometimes he takes a shower in the morning, too. He’s totally fascinated by all of Eric’s projects and wants to get involved, so generally if Eric needs to get something done I try to get Calvin out of the house. We also finally put a baby gate in the hallway, and Calvin is not happy about that at all!

His hair is filling in, so he doesn’t look like a baldy anymore. It’s gotten a little darker, too. I don’t know how dark it will get, but he’s definitely not a towhead like Eric was when he was little.

The weather is getting a little colder, so we’ve been trying to get our barefoot boy to wear something on his feet, with very limited success. When I first tried a pair of shoes on him, I held him in my lap to get the shoes on, and when I tried to put him down he tightened up his abs and kept his legs straight out in front of him. He would NOT put his feet on the ground. Of course, it’s impossible to keep socks on him. He’ll walk around in them for  a couple of minutes, but as soon as he sits down he pulls them off. I got him a little pair of mukluks and those work well – they go higher up his calf so they’re not easy for him to pull off, but they’re basically just a sock with a sole and he can walk in them very easily. They don’t seem to bother him too much, but he’s generally happiest when he has bare feet, even on our cold tile. Crazy kid.

Calvin survived his first cold without too much trauma – there were a couple of rough days, but that’s about it. He thinks it’s hilarious when Eric and I blow our noses, but if you try to get near him with a tissue it’s like the world is coming to an end. That’s pretty typical, I think. Other than that he’s been in good health and we’ve all managed to avoid the swine flu that’s going around. That’s one more thing to be thankful for as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday!

I had a conference in Monterey at the end of October, so we packed up Calvin and roughly half of our wordly possessions and hit the road. We spent the first night in Santa Barbara, and Calvin got to explore a new beach:

Then we headed up to Monterey – we tacked on a couple extra days to my conference to make a little vacation out of it. We scored guest passes to the Aquarium (thanks so much, Kim!) and Calvin really enjoyed it.

The weather was very nice most of the time, and we went on lots of walks:

And of course we introduced Calvin to our favorite pub, the Crown & Anchor:

It was a good trip. Calvin traveled well – no major problems. But traveling with a baby is a lot of work and requires a lot of stuff! We had a good time but were all glad to get back home again.

Between getting caught up after traveling, computer problems, and sickness, I haven’t had the opportunity to update the blog. I have lots of pics and video to post, but I’m not going to get to it all tonight, so here are a couple of pictures of Calvin on Halloween to tide you over.

You can’t tell from the photos, but he glows in the dark!

Looks like we’re moving, doesn’t it? But we’re just heading out on our first big road trip with Calvin. I have a conference in Monterey, so we’re making a vacation out of it. Traveling with a baby involves a lot more stuff!

Let’s see, what’s new with Calvin? He’s slept through the night for the past two nights – woohoo! He’s waking up at 5:00 am, but it’s not too bad when we’re getting 6 or 7 hours straight, and he gets 10! Very nice. He’s still all over the map with his naps – some days he takes a couple of nice, long ones, and some days he won’t nap for more than 20 or 30 minutes. It doesn’t seem to correlate with how well he slept at night, either. We can’t figure it out.

All the walking is having an effect, and he’s definitely eating a lot more these days. We finally moved up from the small bottles to the big ones. He’s just starting to show an interest in feeding himself. Up to now he has stubbornly resisted putting any food substances in his own mouth. Handful of dirt? No problem. Bite of pancake? Hell, no! He eats off a spoon really well, but if we put cheerios or something in front of him for him to feed himself, he usually just plays with it. Lately we’ve given him a couple of biter biscuits, though, and he seems to like those. Of course, he has to pick the messiest possible thing to eat! They get really disgusting really quickly. Yum.

We try to get him outside a lot to explore and play. He loves to wander around and there’s only so much for him to do at our house without getting into stuff he shouldn’t. Eric takes him down to the beach pretty often, and we went down together last weekend.

Here he is destroying a sandcastle and practicing his oral hygiene (mmm….seaweed):

Of course, after all the playing, it’s time to clean up. The foot shower at the beach is perfect height for a baby.

But bath time at home is still his favorite.

For the second time, plans to take Calvin to a birthday party did not pan out. The first time, he napped through the party. Yesterday, the party was cancelled because the birthday girl came down with the chicken pox – poor Ellie! So, I took him over to my mom’s instead. He learned a little about Halloween:

And he played games with Grandma:

So, no birthday cake for Cal, but he didn’t seem to mind much. He always manages to entertain himself:

And he keeps us pretty well entertained, too.

One of Calvin’s top teeth came in the other day, and it looks like there’s another one on the verge. No pics yet – they are very hard to see, even when he smiles really big.

He’s trying to convince us that he’s all innocent and angelic:

But we know better:

Needless to say, we no longer have any toilet paper within Calvin’s reach.

He loves opening and closing doors, and he does a lot of “laps” – back and forth on the couch, back and forth between the bathtub and the bathroom door. 

He’s getting more vocal and expressive. He’s also pretty pleased with himself and his new skills: