It's Official

Nathaniel is walking! Once he finally decided he wanted to, he just started walking all over the place. Here's the evidence from last Sunday:

Before he had quite figured it out, his favorite activity was to push the laundry basket all around the house. Who needs a walker, right? :) He also started to put things he wanted to take with him into the basket like so....

(An empty milk jug from the recycling and a bouncy ball are apparently desirable items.)

He is growing and changing so fast these days. He's in that stage where he is figuring new things out every day. He still doesn't talk very much. He says "Da!" all the time for Daddy, especially when he hears the garage door open when Daddy comes home. He says "Mama" only occasionally. He can say something like "guck" for yucky. Sometimes it seems like he's saying "ball". That's pretty much it, though. He is finally doing signs. He will point at something and then make the sign for more. Tonight he was doing that at the cookie I had. It was pretty funny. He is definitely communicating a lot more.

He has mastered a few animal sounds. His very first one was growling, which I thought was hilarious and so like him. He is such a little boy. Now he can do an elephant and a giraffe, as demonstrated on the next video. Baby Food is Nate's all-time favorite book, just like Natalie when she was little. To see Natalie's version of the animal sounds from the book see this post. It's an Atkin family classic video. :)

Nate loves to eat crayons. He really does. No matter how hard I try to get the girls to pick up their crayons, he still ends up with some. He can grab stuff off the edges of the table now, too, which makes things difficult. With other things, if I say "yucky" and ask him to give it me, he will. Not so with crayons. He throws a fit when I take them away and if I try to dig out the crayon pieces from his mouth. I don't get it.

I can't believe how big he is getting. Natalie wasn't too much older than he is now when we moved here and that seems like it was yesterday. I'm just trying to enjoy those moments when he'll snuggle with me and the tight hugs he gives me every once in awhile. I love my little boy.