Walking on Sunshine!

It's official! We have a walker on our hands. As I'm sure will be the case throughout his life, Bub clearly likes to live life on his own terms. While he held his head up, sat unsupported, and crawled relatively early on, our little man waited until 14.5 months to walk (and, shortly thereafter, climb).

Now that he can walk, he loves to dance. This started at daycare as a way for the daycare provider to engage him so I could leave without tears (poor guy had a rough transition, and was slow to warm up to his new childcare). Now, when we walk in in the mornings, Bub walks right over to the CD player and points to indicate he wants his favorite song. The song is entirely in Spanish, and I have no idea what it says, yet I find myself singing it all day long (as I'm sure they do at daycare, since he apparently asks for it repeatedly). At home, dance parties have quickly become our favorite evening activity.

Bub has been fascinated with music from day one. He's always seemed happy listening to music, and has lovingly obliged my desire to sing to him constantly. More recently, he's developed a love for his toy piano. But our little musician has also shown us that he is quite the artist. Chalk and finger paints seem to be tied for his favorite mode of artistic expression at this point.

His word, sign, and tooth count have all gone up over the past month. While he still doesn't say mama (or mommy, or ma, or anything that we could construe to be close to it), he now says "bye-bye", "night night", "hot", "no", "that", and (his favorite) "this". "This" is used, on average, 5,239 times a day to indicate his desire to know what something is called, to let us know he wants something, to point out something particularly exciting, or in any other context you could possibly imagine using the word "this".

Bub's tooth count is up to 11, and he will sign for hungry, thirsty, more, all done, and milk. If he's signing that he's hungry, and we aren't actively getting him food, he will walk over to the pantry signing "hungry", and bang the doors until we get him a snack (clearly, judging by the above picture, we rarely feed the kid).

I have to say, I thought I would really mourn the loss of the baby stage. I was desperately holding on, telling everyone that I did not in fact have a toddler. Since he wasn't officially yet "toddling", I still had a baby. Now that he's off and (almost) running, I can't help but admit that this stage is somehow even more delicious than the last. Sure we have our occasional temper tantrum, but watching him explore the world on his own terms is magical. Granted, I'm not ready to pack up the baby carrier just yet (I've already warned him that I will most likely take him to college in it), but I may just be ready to publically admit that we are the parents of a toddler.