Leaps and Bounds

Just under a month after his first birthday, Leon decided to join the world's pedestrians ;). Right away, as soon as he figured it out (while welcoming Mommy at daycare ;)), he loved walking more than the tentative one or two steps he'd been doing in the preceding weeks. He has now mastered the key move of standing up in the middle of a room by himself. That has made him unstoppable. He is still thrilled just by the act of walking but he is also getting pretty good at it, so there are some transportation benefits. Although when in the biggest hurry, he still resorts to crawling, such as to rush to the kitchen for breakfast or dinner, or to make a quick escape when Dari threatens him with pillows, toys, "crushie huggies" (see below) or sheer noise.

He is definitely also attempting to chase after Dari, which meets with excited escapes on the other end. And it's all very fun to watch :).

Sometimes I wish we had a brain-scanning machine of some sort at home. Right up there with our blender and microwave, you know. It would be really cool to actually see the growing brain power that Leon seems to accummulate every day. For example, with the walking, he was very close for a while and then, suddenly, it was as if he finally coordinated all the little steps that were needed for him to make actual trips across the room. The popular wisdom on this seems to focus on "practicing" walking and that's obviously a big part of the success but it is very clear that the milestone is much more than just a sign of physical progress. The walking trick clearly coincided with other exciting abilities. Leon likes to put the cover on his sippy cup or bottle, he is obsessed with sorting toys, he really enjoys picking pages in his books, and he is pretty good at putting Legos together. The other day he even pulled an empty juice carton out of the recycling bin and put it back in the fridge, while I had it briefly open for something else! We would not want it to get spoiled, would we?

His "vocabulary" of signs has also been growing and he is using them much more accurately. Besides signing, he is actually trying to say things more often, like "done," "uh-oh," "ball," and several more in Slovak. Oh, and we added monkey as the category between bunny and cow when sorting animals ;). Some of our favorite signs are elevator (no idea...), light, car, and birdie. I got the last one on video - he did this when he heard some crows outside, I think the word he is trying to say is "vtacik" (birdie in Slovak).

http://youtu.be/GFNwgmXmti0