This is the best way to haul around the boy.  You'd think we'd build up some arm endurance, but he grows faster than our muscles.  The only drawback to this arrangement is that he refuses to hold on so you have to hold him in place, which means holding your hands up above your head until the blood drains out of them and they go numb.  If you're not careful, you reach the point where you can no longer hold your hands up there, but you also no longer have the strength to lift him off.  Fortunately, he's clever enough to crawl off if you carefully fold forward into a "praise Allah" pose.  Make sure you're facing Mecca first.

We joined the remarkably recovered Great Aunt Suz and Uncle Blain for breakfast in Gig Harbor.  Former WSU Cougar Blain helped us keep Gargantua in perspective, although perhaps this is a vision of the future.  Mom says no football, son.  Only swimming and other non-contact, low-impact sports.  It's OK, boy.  You come from a long line of bookworms and nerds.  Dungeons & Dragons doesn't count as a contact sport, either, unless you do it live action, and even I can't condone that. 

 

 

I know there's not much doubt that the Elliott is my son, but I think the skin tone demonstration here is the final nail in that little scientific debate.  I asked Sarah if she'd throw some melanin in the mix, but it seems to have been left on the cutting room floor.  And they say albinism is a recessive mutation.

Also, check out the gun show.  He's up to 25 lbs. now, and it's really starting to pay off.  Maybe I should rent him out to a gym.

 

This weekend we introduced our son to physics, and he looked and he said... that it was good.  He likes the forward part more than the reverse part, but overall, he approves.

We also took him to his first concert.  The Indigo Girls were at the zoo Sunday night, so we thought we'd give ourselves some crowd control practice.  We learned that we can control the Elliott in a crowd for 3 hours.  Unfortunately, we entered the crowd about 2 hours before the concert started.  

He wasn't bad, mind you.  He was just rowdy.  He wanted to play cranium with the kids in front of us.  He macked heavily on the crowd of drunk 30-somethings to our right.  He made fast friends with the little girl to our left.  He was a total social butterfly.  But by far, the most startling moment of the evening came when, on the Indigo Girl's first song, he raised his arms above his head and started full-on hippy grooving.  There was no coaching or mimicry going on, just pure, natural rhythm forcing its way from his soul and fountaining out through the tips of his fingers.  I know it's not just us thinking he's amazing, because as soon as he started boogying, people all around us started gasping and murmuring to "look at the dancing baby."  I admit, I've been expecting he would soon start displaying his genius, but being coordinated was not the avenue I expected it to manifest itself upon.  It has to be a recessive gene.

On a side note, that rowdy picture up there is fascinating to me.  He looks nothing like a baby in it.  In fact, I imagine that picture is a preview of what he will look like when he's ten years old, or perhaps 16 and moments from doing something for which he will be grounded.  Which really brings home the fact that he's just 22 days from one year old.  To that, I say HOLY COW!  

I officially declare the phrase "they just grow up so fast" to be not a cliché, but a basic, scientific statement of fact.

 

 

It's story time.

Starting around Junior High, school and I had a falling out of sorts.  I have always maintained that I was just too smart and talented for school, and as a result the boredom caused me to do very badly.  Viewed in the harsh light of adulthood, I see I should have spelled boredom L-A-Z-Y.  

As I moved into high school, I started skipping school with fairly horrendous regularity.  Whenever possible, I would feign illness to accomplish this so I could have a note to officially sanction my cartoon and soap opera watching.  My parents are no dummies, and I'm a pretty rotten actor, so I very rarely pulled off a bonafide "sick" day.  To counter this, I forged my mother's signature on all my notes.  

One day, I actually got sick.  Since a burning fever and vomiting are pretty advanced maneuvers, even for a professional faker, my parents relented and blessed my day off.  Being the too smart and talented person that I was, I knew I couldn't bring in a note from my mother the next day because the signature wouldn't match the FOURTEEN others they already had on file for that semester.  I cleverly made sure my Dad provided the note.  Thus, it was to my great chagrin that this fifteenth note still proved my downfall because the school truancy officer, seeing that I had never brought a note from my Dad before, figured I had forged it and alerted my parents.  Much hilarity then ensued.  As a result, I spent the remainder of that semester in a special room next to the principal's office, making up 15 days of homework.

The whole point of this story is that The Boy was ejected from day care yesterday with a 102.1 fever.  School policy states that a child with a fever over 101 cannot return until 24 hours after the fever has broken without medications.  The doctor diagnosed it as a respiratory infection and sent us home with antibiotics.  Despite the antibiotics, regular doses of Tylenol, and an early bed, the fever persisted until this morning, meaning Ferris Bueller and I got to play officially-sanctioned hooky today.  

I have no idea how he faked a respiratory infection, but this is definitely my son.  

 

 

Sarah is in Cedar Rapids, Egypt, tonight, gettin' paid.  To make her stay more bearable, I am posting two videos.  This entry is mostly just for her, but I'll let you read it too, because I like you.  Sorry about the file size.  You should get broadband.

The first movie is to set her mind at ease because the boy has not been eating solid foods for a week.  This should do the trick.

Note also that he appears to now fully understand English.  He was not coached in any way.  Really!

This second one is just for the cute.  

 

 

This can't be my son.  I never helped my Dad around the house.

As you can see, the Elliott's newfound mobility has resulted in upgrading to threat level yellow.  We have to erect barricades, watch for suspicious activity, and definitely not leave packages unattended.  The first day he crawled, I left him solo for 30 seconds in the living room near a Sunday newspaper circular.  Let me tell you, for someone who has trouble putting cheerios in his mouth, he sure can separate and scatter sheets of newsprint quickly.  

The tricks just keep on coming.  He's learned to sign "no more food" (cover face in hands and shake head violently), and "more" (gather fingers together in a point on each hand and tap them together at the fingertips).  Just to see if he really understood what he was saying, I countered the "no more food" move tonight with the "here comes the airplane" strategy, and although I succeeded in getting an airplaneful of rice cereal into the hanger, he immediately raspberried it back at me.  Now I know "face covered head shake" means "face covered head shake."

Yesterday I loaned him my watch while he was sitting on the floor and when I tried to take it back, he started quickly pivoting on his bottom like he was on an invisible sit and spin in a desperate bid to keep me from taking it back, giggling the whole time.

He turns pages in his books, one at a time.  He follows us around the house.  He loves to speed crawl away when he's nekkid.   He likes to drag the dining room chairs around, two at a time.  And he knows there are stairs behind that door in the hallway and one of these days, by God, he's going to get up there!

In short, he's an entirely different kid than he was two weeks ago and it's the most fascinating transformation I've ever seen.  My only fear is, I think he might be smarter than me.

 

 

So I've been sitting on this news for about two weeks, but as you can see here, the boy figured out the crawling thing.  Kudos again to my forward thinking wife for capturing seal boy for posterity... or should I say posteriority.  No, you're right.  I probably shouldn't.   

This shot represents why I haven't yet announced his newfound mobility.  Who has the time?  Once he figured out he didn't have to stay where he was put, he didn't. 

Don't get me wrong.  It's as adorable as all the rest of his tricks (even though he's not crawling to me as much as I had daydreamed).  This phase is just turning out to be more athletic than I had expected.  This picture depicts the predominant view of adventure boy in action.  Who knew he'd learn the speed aspects of crawling so quickly.

He's also pulling himself up to kneeling and standing positions whenever there are two or more sharp things to smash his head against nearby.  Frankly, the biggest reason I've been lax in posting the crawling announcement is that after he goes to bed, it takes awhile for my hands to stop shaking.  Why don't I remember my parents flailing about and gasping in horror every few seconds when I was young?  Oh yeah.  That second child thing.

The worst part about the delay is that even though the Elliott has been crawling since June 25th, his arch rival Weston posted his own crawling evidence first on his own blog, and then sent a taunting "game on" e-mail to him.  Weston is a week younger than Elliott and they've known each other since pre-baby class, so their epic conflict has some history.  I've tried to teach Weston and his Dad that peace is the answer and that "who crawls before who" is such a trivial concern, but for the sake of historical accuracy it should be known that the Elliott crawled a whole week before Weston.  And I personally find it a little strange that Weston didn't really get the hang of crawling until my son showed him how to do it.  Game on indeed! 

Oh, and in case you missed it, the June Archive has arrived over there to the left.  It looks the same size as all the other months, but it's actually much, much smaller.