Walking Progress - Travel Imminent

Proud mama that I am, I had to post a couple (VERY short) videos of Indiana walking. He's made tremendous progress in just this first week of walking, as you can see from the first video of tiny tottering steps to the more confident progress of the second one I took today.

He's going around obstacles and around corners, but still just short little spurts at a time. But even those are getting longer and more frequent and he's standing and balancing more, which gives him more freedom to do things with his hands while standing. He's responding to more requests, like "Put the ball in the tower," mimicking/pretending to eat, throwing things away in the trashcan, feeding himself more adeptly. And he's getting a 5th tooth. It's like his development is on fast forward. 

Also, we (my Mom, Indiana, and I) leave for France on Tuesday! My dad is leaving tomorrow to spend a week in Jerusalem, then he's joining us in France. Sadly, Casey is not coming. :( We're going to spend a week in the country with my family to celebrate my grandmother's 90th birthday. So fun. I hope all my cousins and their kids will be there. It's been quite a while since we were all together. And then, Dad, Indy and I are going to stay with one of my cousins in Paris. Can't wait. I don't have any big plans for Paris, other than a couple museums I'd like to visit...but I think I'll manage to keep busy. I'm a nervous about traveling with a young toddler, but it will be worth it. I'll post lots of pictures when I get back. :-)

Sweet Pea Update

This summer, Indiana has been:

Exploring.

 

Getting acquainted with pots and pans.

 

Working with the alphabet.

Eating lots waffles and oranges.

 

 

And generally being a curly-headed cutie.

I love those curls! 

And on Wednesday, for the first time ever, walking! (Sadly, no picture). 

We've been taking him to the pool and having him practice walking in the water to help him gain confidence. I figured if they have aerobics for the elderly in the water to help them balance, it would work for babies too, and it did! He played and walked and ran in the (<2 ft deep) water for half an hour, then we took him out to see if he would walk on dry land. Success! He walked back and forth (getting increasingly grumpy) four or five times, then we let him rest. I think it helps that the surface is concrete and very unappealing for crawling. At home, he is not in the least bit interested in independent walking, but at least we know he can, and when he's ready, he will walk more.We leave for France in less than two weeks(!) and I had expected him to be walking by then, but I'm glad that he walked for the first time when both Casey and I could see. It was pretty special. Sweet Pea is growing up. :')

Summer Vacation

It's been a great summer so far. It's nice being at home and spending more time with Indiana.

He's such a funny, sweet little boy. His new thing is vigorous head shaking: NO! It's so funny how much he loves to be able to communicate and influence decisions, like what's for breakfast. An orange, not a banana, etc. Plus, less food ends up on the floor.

It's not a perfect system, as the attentiveness of the dogs here illustrates.

In less that two weeks, I've already read three books (and as Casey would qualify here, I actually READ these books and didn't listen to the audio book version, which he says doesn't really count as "reading" them. Whatever. Books is books.). Casey's been reading too...especially since we went to the beach!

I booked a little 3 day, 4 night trip to Cancun. So relaxing. Nana Cindy came up and stayed with Indiana so we could get maximum relaxation out of our vacation. We spent most of our time reading and lounging by the beach. The view was beautiful.

We stayed at an all-inclusive resort to be extra lazy. It sounds fancy, but it was a smaller, not-as-new-and-luxurious one, so my inner thriftiness was mollified. There were a lot of Russians staying there, oddly, and they weren't very friendly. Whatever. We just snacked and napped and read and lounged our vacation away.

 

Under one of those umbrellas was my permanent spot. Excellent. Reading. Watch the waves. Jump in for a little dip. Get out, refill my drink (mostly diet coke!) and resume my spot. We had planned to do some snorkeling, but the water was much too choppy and the current too strong for that. Mostly just playing in waves...which was fun too.We did take one trip into town. Of course, we had no itinerary, so we just got on a bus...and it ended up taking us into downtown and then way out of downtown into the less, um, touristy part of Cancun. We road the same bus right back into town and walked around the mall. A rather lame excursion...but whatever. A lazy vacation is what I wanted, and what I got.

Ah, paradise!