Our Little Elf

Christmas always feels different when there are little children around. But with new babies, it is extra special. Leon's excitement about wrapping paper and bows, rather than the presents is likely to move even the staunchest materialist. His curious, puzzled exploration of Christmas trees and ornaments is guaranteed to wake up your attentiveness to life's details. Add some cute Christmas baby outfits to the mix, and you are ready for the season.

That is the mood Leon brought to Kentucky, where he went to be a little elf for Grandma and Grandpa Seybert. He loved it and and enjoyed all the extra attention. He did not want to miss out on anything and when Dari was opening his presents, Leon made his first crawling move only to get to see better. Okay, probably to get to put the wrapping paper in his mouth. But still, the fact that he did it by the Christmas tree just made that milestone one bit more precious. Another special moment was when Leon got to meet Greatgrandpa Arthur, whose name he shares as his middle name. They had a great time hanging out!

 

To get energy for all his extra socializing and pre-crawling exercise, Leon has been really into solid foods, liking it all and developing some preferences. For example, if presented with baby rice puffs and rice chex, he will pick out the puffs, drop them off his chair (!), and then enjoy the chex. Should the chex be missing, he will complain until some appear. As long as there are some chex, he will tolerate anything else. If his preferences remain stable, we can work with it :).

Collections

So we are pretty much done with images of a baby lounging on the Richard Scarry book. If allowed to, Leon would chew up one specific corner of it - that has been his favorite way to "devour" literature lately. We are working on getting to the content but he is often so adamant that we have to shorten our reading session and preserve our mini library. Maybe this will improve when the top teeth finally pop out. Or maybe that is when the destruction will start for real!

Recently, Leon got a present from our Ithaca friends Steve, Melanie and Tommy to help celebrate his eight-month birthday. If Leon the Bear looks familiar that is because you may have seen some celebrity babies walking around with one of their own. Or, perhaps, you remember the one that Dari got back when he was a tiny baby. Either way, we love the expansion of our collection and the obligatory photo session was a must. So here are a few extra pictures to go with the 8-month book shot.

 

 

Apples to Apples

Leon is our little adventurous baby. Well, he is still not (ad)venturing very far but he is definitely up for trying new experiences, whether it comes to visiting new places (especially while riding in the Bjorn carrier), grabbing everything within sight, testing the limits of his balance (while sitting) and, most exciting of all, in the food department! This evidenced in the following video, in which Dedo decided to let Leon try apples in a new form (he is a big fan of the puree already).

http://youtu.be/E8vLNgIbSho

How refreshing after all the texture trouble with Dari! Let's hope that this keeps up. You can also see Leon being very adamant about making his preferences known. He seems to be developing his own little sign language (the advantage of being a younger sibling is that your parents are likely better trained at recognizing these communication attempts early ;)). For example whenever he does NOT like some food or is full or
does not feel like eating, he will start banging both hands against the tray. You might think that that is just what babies do but it is really quite consistent in his case. Maybe, on some level, he figured out that that minimizes the probability of Mommy getting it in his mouth without spilling and drew some connection between his flailing and the end of the feeding session. Here is Leon checking out the high chair in a restaurant for the first time.

 In non-feeding news, Leon has been rolling over here and there but just does not seem too interested in perfecting that skill. In another display of strong opinions, he usually "requests" to be seated, so that he can lean over to all fours and try to push himself around, working to get his feet out from under him. This expands his reach somewhat but does not get him into too much trouble, yet ;).

He has also been spending time with Dedo, who has come from Europe to watch him while Mommy completes the tasks associated with a finishing semester and a starting fellowship in downtown DC. So far, Leon has been really easy on Dedo and basically slept through the half-days that they were alone. Here you see Dedo practicing his skills as a fancy arm chair for Leon, who has mastered self-feeding at daycare, apparently :).

 As a bonus, Leon is also an outdoors sleeper, so that makes scheduling significantly easier - stroller walks don't exhaust him but stabilize his routine. Sometimes Dari joins too, and is very cute about making sure Leon is warm enough.

And finally, Leon has also been waving at people. It is not clear that he understands the full meaning of "bye-bye" but he is pretty good about returning the gesture. The funniest part is when he starts observing his own hand waving and doesn't notice the person he was waving to left already :).