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…and grand-daddies!

Nolan’s favorite time of day is letting the dog outside with his daddy. If it’s nice out, they chase her around and throw sticks for her, and generally have a blast. We still have a little night owl… this was before bed, probably 10 or 11 o’clock at night, and Nolan wasn’t remotely tired (neither were Jeremy or Freyja, for that matter!).

Jeremy finally got Nolan his very own Red Sox cap. It’s on the big side yet, even though it’s adjustable, and Nolan is not a hat fan these days, but we managed to get a few photos of him in it. I particularly liked this one because they were both waving at Mama.

Nolan isn’t walking yet. He was doing really great hanging onto my hands, but ever since he learned how to crawl, walking is vastly less important to him. When we can get him to practice, he always reminds me of Godzilla or something, with his huge, solid stomping.

We finally got some good photos of Nolan’s unique little crawl. This is the basic shape, which we call his Spider-man pose…

…and then he’s off, always with the left foot flat and the right shin on the ground. He moves around surprisingly fast this way, but it is hard on that shin. Jeremy took bunches of photos of him like this, trying to crawl off the edge of the porch (of course!).

He is less certain of himself when we put him in the grass, though, and wants to stick pretty close to me.

This expression cracks me up… it’s the same one he has when we put him in a shopping cart at the grocery store, with his hands pulled against his chest so he doesn’t have to touch anything. (We don’t have to worry about Nolan chewing on the shopping cart handle, lol!) I know the grass is doing a jungle impression—spring in Oregon!—but we mowed it a few days later.

Nolan got a little more acquainted with the grass, but he started getting warm sitting out in the sun after a few more minutes, so we called it a day.

I’ve been trying to pull myself away from the computer and back to the drawing pad. Here’s a couple of drawings of Nolan that I’ve recently completed. Not the best photos, I’ll try to get better ones posted before long.

Portrait of Nolan

Nolan Pacified

Nolan is 14 months old now and has finally got the hang of the crawling thing. He still has his own unique little crawl, though—right leg bent under his body, left foot flat on the floor—and he really makes good time with it, although it looks really awkward and uncomfortable to me. He’s having a blast with his newfound independence, and is starting to explore and get into everything, just like a toddler should.

He has gotten much more confident pulling himself up to standing on just about anything now, especially if it puts him in a better position to reach stuff he shouldn’t have.

Nolan also really likes chasing us around the house. One of his favorite times of day is when Daddy comes home from work—he crawls over to intercept Jeremy on the way to the back door, and they take the dog out together.

Nolan is getting to be such a busy boy that he really wears himself out. He’s started falling asleep in our arms again, but now he sleeps soundly enough that we can transfer him to the crib without waking him, something he’s never allowed in the past. (But sometimes Daddy just watches baseball and snuggles with him instead.)

This picture just cracked me up. The rest are nicer shots that Jeremy took with the camera on manual. He’s actually been working on some drawings of Nolan based on some of these images, and hopefully he’ll post photos of those himself before long.

Nolan has been a very busy boy these past few weeks. He can now sort of point at things (looks more like he’s saying “I’m number 1,” but we get the idea), wave hello and goodbye (when he feels like it), and pick out the hiding Curious George on every page of his favorite book. He’s also finally figured out how to say the vowel O, but no words yet.

Nolan isn’t walking on his own yet, but his activity level has doubled or tripled. He pulls himself up against my knees and cruises back and forth along the sofa most of the day. Give him a finger or sleeve to hang onto, and he sets off immediately, often on the trail of Freyja or one of her toys. His steps are getting much more confident, and he stomps his little feet so firmly on the floor as he goes that the dog thinks someone is knocking at the door.

But Nolan is almost as busy when he’s sitting on the floor now too. Since he is firmly anti-crawling, he used to sit pretty still and just play with his toys, but he has figured out how to dig in his heels to spin around 360 degrees like a little top. He also stretches so far forward to grab at toys he can’t reach that his little bum comes off the ground. This weekend he combined those motions to come up with his own unique mode of transportation, the likes of which I have never seen.

I was taking pictures of Nolan when he first started wiggling around on Saturday, but I wasn’t able to get a clear shot of it. This is a bad pic of Nolan, but it’s the most descriptive shot I took. He puts his hands on the floor in front of him, stretches forward until his butt comes off the ground, and then tucks his left leg behind him. To move, he pulls forward with his right heel, and pushes off with his left foot, balancing with his hands. It would almost be crawling if he moved his right leg back and dropped his knees, but when we help him into that position, he just freezes and starts fussing.

He can scooch a couple feet at a time with this funny little motion, which has always been enough to get him over to whatever he’s trying to reach (mostly toys, dog, or mama). You can see how his left leg is still sort of tucked under him here. Sometimes he finishes flat on his belly stretching his arms to grab it, but he is able to push straight back up into a sitting position from his tummy now (thank heavens!)

Nolan has been playing with blocks a lot lately. He likes the sound they make when he bangs them together, and he likes knocking down stacks that I set up for him. He’s learning about sharing, so there is also a lot of handing blocks back and forth…

And seeing where he can reach… (You can see his two side-by-side cowlicks pretty well in this shot… The dominant one is on the right and goes counter-clockwise, the one on the left is clockwise, so it all clashes together at the top.)

And he’s particularly fond of smacking them on the linoleum, which makes a much more satisfying noise than the carpet.

Then he wheeled around with his heels, pulled the tray back over to him, realized he was halfway under the jumperoo and couldn’t sit up straight without getting bonked by the seat, and wailed for a rescue. Have I mentioned that in addition to all of this activity, and some seriously swollen gums (wish those molars would just get it over with and break through), he has quite a case of separation anxiety? Only Mama will suffice, and it doesn’t even count if he’s on Daddy’s lap and I’m right next to them. And no more self-soothing or self-entertaining in the morning if he wakes up before I come in; we’ve had at least 3 early days in the past week—by which I mean 6 or 7am, compared to his usual 9 or 10am.

Nolan is doing great. He isn’t walking yet, but he is definitely working on it, and spends a good part of his time standing up, clinging to our knees or the furniture. He’s not thrilled at the idea of balancing all by himself out in space yet, but he’s managed to stand up a few times unassisted for a 5- or 6-second stretch, so we fully anticipate that he’ll be off and running soon.

It’s been a while since I posted new pictures, so I’ll try to play a little catch-up and show you some from my mom’s visit.

This was taken during Nolan’s dedication. My mother did a beautiful job planning and officiating it, and in this photo, she was anointing Nolan’s head with oil. Although you can’t see it, he was really grinning at her.

Nolan behaved pretty well during his party, despite the sugar rush and the fact that it interfered with his naptime. (He decided to forego the nap entirely that day… oh joy!) Here he was bouncing up and down on his Great Aunt Marty’s lap while we cut the cake.

Nolan still isn’t much interested in holding his bottle even though he does with the sippy cup, but Grammy Rita got him to hold his own bottle not once but twice.

This was Nolan’s favorite birthday present, a little drum with big buttons that light up and play steel drum music. He pushes each button squarely with his index fingers, and seems to especially like the yellow one.

My mom has an elderly friend in Colorado named Nolan, and I guess he wears hats like these all the time, so when we saw a baby one for sale, she insisted on getting it to take photos. Our little Nolan cooperated just barely long enough to snap a few before pulling it off.

We were invited to stay one night at my aunt and uncle’s beach house in Rockaway Beach, a project that has kept them busy for the past 5 years or so. It was great to get away from Salem for a little while, and Nolan was a great car traveller (but it may have helped that he had his mama and grammy in the back seat to entertain him!). This photo marks his very first visit to the beach, which he totally missed because he fell asleep in the stroller on the walk over. He wouldn’t have gotten to see much anyway, because it was misting, and we kept a blanket draped over the stroller to keep the wet off.

I was most worried about how Nolan would do with sleeping, being away from home. He took his nap in the afternoon laying on my chest while I watched Sense and Sensibility, and got incredibly warm and sweaty, almost beet-red, even after I pulled the blanket back off of him. The body temperature thing is ultimately what caused us to stop co-sleeping with him, and sure enough, he spent the entire night squirming around, rolling into me, and pushing off the covers. I did not get much sleep, and he woke up for good before 8am, something our little late sleeper has never done in my recollections.

Here Grammy Rita is tickling Nolan and getting him all riled up just in time for bed. Sabotage?

I think Nolan had a good birthday, and he did very well being away from home on our beach trip. He even got to taste his first Dungeness crab, freshly caught within the hour.

Nolan celebrated his first year around our sun this past weekend. And, as everyone should, it was celebrated with chocolate cake!

Much to our surprise, he actually managed to finish off an entire adult-size piece of cake. I think we’ve got a confirmed chocoholic in the making!

There’s a video of the cake-eating experience as well for friends and family who couldn’t be there.
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In less than a month now, our tiny man will be a whole year old. Nolan has been working really hard on his mobility. He isn’t crawling or cruising yet, but he won’t hold still for anything. He bounces across the room in a sitting position, he flings himself forward at anything that catches his interest, and he stands up great hanging onto Mommy and Daddy for support. Half the time when he wakes up from a nap, I go into his room to find him facing a different direction in the crib, sitting up, or even flipped forward onto his tummy (still a highly objectionable position for him). So the big news this week was when, a few days ago, I set Nolan down in his crib, turned around for maybe 30 seconds, turned back to check on him, and saw this:

He pulled himself up to standing in the crib! I raced out of the room to grab the camera, but I didn’t need to rush, because he stood there for several minutes with no assistance from anything but the crib rail, and Daddy even came home in time to see it himself. Don’t let the big smile fool you, though: that was mostly in response to seeing the camera. He really wanted me to come get him, and wavered between smiling at the camera and fussing at me the whole time.

That was the big development this week, although Nolan also got his 8th tooth yesterday, which makes 4 on top and 4 on bottom. I think he is working on molars too, so we’ll see how that goes. In the photo above, he was eating a dill crespella, torn into bitesized pieces, while I cooked dinner.

I hope everyone had a good Valentine’s Day. I spent the whole day in the kitchen: baking bread, simmering ragu bolognese, making cannelloni from homemade pasta, plus a Daring Bakers project I can’t discuss yet. Nolan spent part of the day hanging with his daddy, and part snacking in the kitchen with me. Here he was eating little alphabet cookies. Lately he’s started cocking his head sideways at everything he finds interesting, like the camera. And if you look closely, you can see he has three teeth visible on the bottom now, all the better for crunching into cookies, my dear!