Discoveries

Baby Leon has had a great summer. Little by little, he is making the transition from baby to toddler but thanks to his healthy appetite, he may hold on to that cute baby roundness for longer than other kids his age. He had his 15 month checkup in August, which revealed that he is totally well-proportioned but it is something about his cheeks that gives him that continued baby look.
 

Also, until very recently he preferred "just" observing all the happenings around him and absorbing it all like a sponge. This may give the appearance of baby-ness but really it is closer to in-depth theory development. Everywhere he goes, Leon is famous for his side-ward examining glance, with which he welcomes everything and everyone new. You can almost see him thinking: "okay, so what is THIS novelty that I am seeing and how do I make sense of it?" I like to think of it as a budding skeptical attitude of a future scientist. Other, less partial observers just crack up at the innocent curiosity and disarming charm with which it strikes them. It is nearly impossible to capture on camera (because he knows cameras and tries to snatch them) but here are some pictures that come close.

Of course, Leon got to practice this "look" a lot when we traveled to Slovakia, especially while flirting with fellow passengers on the plane. He just loves to communicate with people but he is very particular about only doing this from the safety of Mommy's arms. At the height of his separation anxiety, I literally had to hide so that he could spend some quality time with tetinka, strejda, Bimba, Dedo and starka. To be clear, he warmed up to that very quickly and had a great time but I had to be out of sight not to interfere with those situations. Here, his squeaky shoes (meant to help keep track of the baby) came in very handy - every time I heard him approaching I casually ducked out of the way.

There is one hiding game that Leon enjoys a lot better and that is looking for Dari, who loves to hide in more-or-less plain sight (like under a cover on the sofa, or under a desk, or behind a curtain). Dari gets a great kick out of everyone pretending to not see him, which, of course, Leon does not know how to do. So we would be walking around in a room asking "Where's Dari??" and Leon would simply walk up to him, lift up the cover or the curtain and give us the look that could be summarized as "duh... righ here!" It is therefore not surprising that the first question/sentence he went for was "Kde je Dari?" which means where's Dari? in Slovak :)