Eleven Months

I can’t believe Bennett will turn 1 in less than a month! People always say “my baby’s growing up so fast” and I used to think they were just being overly cheesy / emotional, but it’s totally true. The last month has been pretty fun as Bennett has learned some new things. He finally started crawling – rather than the scooting / army crawling he had been doing for several months. He has been getting better and better at pulling himself up to things, and I think that ability and his Christmas toys finally got him to crawl. A couple days after Christmas, he was playing with his toys and standing / sitting up next to them, and I think realized that if he crawled instead of army crawling between toys, he wouldn’t have to work so hard to sit / stand up by the next toy. He still scoots quite a bit, but is crawling almost half the time. He has also started to get into trouble more now that he pulls himself up to things. He likes to climb on the dishwasher, pull my shoes off their shelves in the closet, and pull things off the shelves in the living room. He’s also been working on his pincer grasp and is pretty good at picking little things off the floor an putting them in his mouth. He especially likes the paper pine needles from our fake Christmas wreath, which was put away a couple weeks ago but Bennett seems to keep finding needles on the floor.

Bennett has also learned to babble. He makes all sorts of noises and seems to enjoy hearing himself. It’s pretty cute, except at church. We decided his first “word” is “uh-oh”. Sometimes he seems to know the meaning and says it at the appropriate times. He also loves his dad – he saves his best giggles for when dad gets home from work and plays with him on our bed, and always wants dad to hold him when he comes to say hi at church. A couple other favorite things: playing peek-a-boo (he understands it well enough now that he’ll hide his face with a blanket or something, then when I say “where’s Bennett?” he uncovers his face and laughs) and chasing / being chased by mom or dad (while the other one holds him).

Here are a few pictures of what he’s been up to (i.e. getting into trouble), and a couple videos of him crawling (if you can, fast-forward the first 20 seconds – it takes him a little bit to get started, and, notice the tongue action) and laughing.