This and That

Things I have been meaning to blog about over the past few weeks:

J is getting much more daring at his walking attempts, which means he is falling over more and more as well. I think he has 3 bruises on his face, poor little man. He likes to hold onto one piece of furniture or object for as long as possible, until his fingers are barely touching, then he takes 3-4 quick steps to reach the next object that is his goal. He can get from one end of the living room to the kitchen using that technique. He is also zooming everywhere with his walker toy and will try to push table chairs or his high chair or anything else that moves easily if his walker toy is not immediately available. He can even turn corners and back up with that thing!

As you can see from the above picture, he is drooling as much as ever still. It's just constant, no matter if he is teething or not. All objects go in his mouth as well; toys, my fingers, the caps to his bottles. I hope he is working on the next few teeth, but can't tell for sure. He decided it was a good idea to chew on the crib rail after yesterday's nap, though, so now I have to come up with some sort of guard. The rail is slightly wider than other cribs, so run of the mill teething guards don't quite fit on it. Anyway, it will have to be painted now if we want to use it as a footboard for a full bed when he gets older.

Besides walking, J is getting much better at other gross motor skills as well. He can stoop down from standing to retrieve a toy and stand right back up. He kneels, and he has started to do some sort of weird bear crawl more with his feet and hands rather than hands and knees. Oh, he also has started dancing to music occasionally by bouncing up and down.

For fine motor skills, still no clapping or anything like that. The closest he has come is that he is now starting to bang two objects together. We are still working on baby sign language for communication and I have only seen ones that require only one hand. He has signed eat and milk for me, but does not do them consistently yet. "More" was the first one I tried to teach him, and I am still doing it, but that requires two hands!

We have had 4 or 5 get-togethers/ play-dates with other adoptive or adopting families since the beginning of the year. Some are old friends, some are new. There are also 2 or 3 more already planned for upcoming weeks. So thanks to everyone who we've met somewhere else or had over to our house! It was fun! What I'd really like to do is to join or organize a regular playgroup for J and I to attend once a week or every other week. It would be great to have other kiddos his age for him to interact with. We shall see what I can find.
Here some pictures of J at one of our playdates:
That's it for now. He's up and at 'em now, talking to himself. Guess it's time to start the day. :)