Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Happy New Year!

Carter has really learned a lot in the last week, but I haven't had much time to post. We just got home from spending ten days in Colorado, and it was interesting to see Carter's reaction to coming home. He looked around the living room and grinned and squealed, and has been bubbly and happy ever since. I don't remember him noticing his surroundings so much before, so it was cool to see that he's made that mental leap.

He has now been on 25 flights, as crazy as that sounds. If he'd had his own seats, he would have collected enough miles this year to earn a free domestic ticket and Gold status as an American Airlines frequent flyer. He did really well on the flights back from Colorado, and was definitely the best-behaved baby on the plane. He's a great traveler, for which we're really grateful!

He's been working on crawling for nearly two months now, and 3 days ago, he finally started to crawl for real. He literally went from commando crawling to actual crawling in one afternoon. It was almost like a switch had been flipped! I tried to get some video with my phone on Monday, and this was the best I could manage. He's trying to get at Doug's computer here:



He also got really good at standing in the last week. He'd been pulling up and standing for a while, but he is now a lot more sturdy on his feet. I don't have to hover over him when he's standing any more, and if he falls on his butt, he just gets back up now instead of crying. In this video, you can see how good he is at standing. He also bounces a lot, something that is new:



He's just starting to cruise a bit, and gets more confident all the time! Since we got home, he's been exploring a lot and crawling all over the place. I got a really good crawling video this afternoon, which shows much better how he can get around.



We will probably have to put the baby gates up soon. The living room area is pretty much baby-proofed, and so he can roam freely and we don't have to tell him "no" all the time -- not fun for any of us!

Here are a few more pictures from our trip to Colorado. Here Carter is standing and looking out the back door. He would do this for 20 minutes at a time.





Here he is hanging out with Daddy. He looks so big standing there! He's wearing a sweater my friend Rita knitted him for Christmas.



And here he is wearing a sweater I knitted for him for Christmas. :-D



I can't believe this year is almost over, that Carter is almost 1. I remember sitting on my mom's couch with Doug last New Year's Eve, rubbing my 28-week pregnant belly and saying I was looking forward to all the changes 2008 would bring to our lives. I had no idea that just 5 days later, my life would be turned completely upside-down. I'm going to use my personal blog to reflect on those events over the next few weeks, so check that out if you're interested.

Happy New Year, everyone! This may be the first year I don't manage to stay up until midnight, heh.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yay! His sweater fits! He does look so handsome, if I do say so myself....