Warm Wind in His Hair

Leon is now a very competent crawler and makes the most of his improving ability to get around. He's mastered walking with push toys too, and that is a term very loosely interpreted in his world. Basically ANYTHING that is about his height and moves around is a push toy. A wheeled chair, a hamper full or empty, a cardboard box, his musical table, even the vacuum cleaner... As the list suggests, Leon likes to stay close when Mommy does things around the house. Unlike many babies, he is not scared of the vacuum cleaner and even enjoys hanging out around it while it's on and getting the warm air blow in this face. He later discovered that the oven (locked and baby proofed ;) has the same "feature" and Leon "supervised" closely the baking of some cupcakes for Dari's half birthday.

Most of all, Leon is super excited about having conquered the stairs.  Whereas initially he would need some coaxing to make it all the way up, now he will sometimes head for the stairs himself, so it's all hands on deck (or eyes, rather). Big brother Dari is always VERY eager to help with this. Unfortunately, his way of preventing Leon from tumbling off the stairs is to wave his arms at the top, which only makes Leon more excited about the prospect. This video of Leon going up is not the best because I prioritized his safety over filming angle but seeing his delight trumps the "footwork" anyway, right?

http://youtu.be/thdIIMcQa4w

Leon is also a big talker now. You can tell how he responds to me saying "hi" in the video. Most of it is still not very comprehensible but his range of sounds has expanded dramatically and he has been saying ma-ma when he wants to be picked up. Melts my heart! He also figured out that making sounds starting with "N" (na-na-na, ne-ne-ne) is something that we generally do when we are not pleased with something, like being laid down on the changing table when it is obviously time to chew on some furniture :). Leon also has a new trick in the sign-language department: he will raise his arms high up when asked how tall he will grow up to be. Unfortunately for his social capital among other babies, he only knows this is Slovak. We'll work on that, and on capturing the picture/video - for now the slightly overdue book photo update!