Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Excuse me, sir, you have a little something on your chin, there…)

For those who have NOT seen the hottest video on Facebook featuring baby Blake, it is available here.  I hope you enjoy it.

Blake Crawling – Video – Jan 2009

Here are some juicy snippets:

• Blake now eats peas, carrots, Fiber One Cereal, Oatmeal – Old Fashioned Style, and salmon.  He does not yet have a taste for lentils, and he is only lukewarm about pumpkin.
• Blake has begun a behavior – hopefully it won’t become a habit- of GRINDING HIS TEETH.  It makes a horrible blood-curdling noise.  It sounds like rocks grinding together, but when you know it’s his teeth, it makes your skin crawl.
• He is doing a new adorable smile without opening his mouth.  Is he embarrassed by the gap between his front teeth?  I hope not!
• He can pull himself up on furniture like the couch.  He uses both hands and his mouth to get up.  He can’t yet “cruise” or go side-to-side on the furniture.
• Blake can now do a straight-arm-crawl in addition to the army crawl.  He likes to crawl under his exer-saucer, it’s like going through a tunnel.
• Blake wants to give a shout out to his new baby cousin Bennet and a new baby at church Lillian.  Maybe when you two can sit up we can arrange a virtual play date.
• Blake loves Daddy to sing him to sleep – especially “The ducks come marching home again!”  He’s not sleeping through the night, so Mommy only treats him to very repetitive and low-inflection versions of Twinkle-Twinkle and the Alphabet song.

That’s all that I can think of that’s interesting.  He keeps changing his sleep pattern on us, so he’s waking up about 4 AM and going back to sleep til about 8:00 or so.  He’s very happy and smiley still.  He’s looking forward to seeing his Southern relations on his birthday!

Emily

I don’t even want to check and see how long it’s been since the last post.  We have been busy.  Here are some highlights.

• Mommy started and quit a full-time job working downtown for Marcus & Millichap.  Blake started preschool 4 days a week and really likes it.
• Blake and family visited his North Carolina family outside of Charlotte, NC for Thanksgiving.  He got to meet Mimi and Poppy as well as his great-great Grammy Toni and 3 aunts and uncles.
• Blake has 4 teeth now! 2 on top and 2 on the bottom.
• Blake got a fever of 101 degrees after his 6 month shots!
• Blake is really good at ROARING like a dinosaur.
• Blake can also say Da-da-da and there is debate over whether he’s associating it with Ben.  I witnessed a pretty convincing demonstration in which we were looking at family pictures and he said "Da-Da" EXACTLY when a picture of Ben came on the screen.
• Blake is also practicing waving – but we don’t know if he knows what that means, either, he could just be nervous.
• Blake has joined the ranks of babies would rather Wear It than Eat it.  We are introducing rice cereal.  It is messy, but I think he’s starting to get the hang of it.

Update – since I started writing this post, I got really sick, so did Ben, we both had pink eye, and bad colds (sinus infection?)

Blake seems to have sailed through.

I can now see 2 new side teeth coming in on top next to the front teeth. 

I also fed him some strained pumpkin with his rice cereal and he seemed to like it.

He has the army crawl down and can race forward pretty fast, especially when he’s going after the computer wires and surround-sound speakers under Daddy’s desk!