Milestone Alert: Gareth is Cruising

In the last few weeks or so – I really don’t remember when it first happened – Gareth has started cruising.  He was initially holding on to furniture and taking a few steps.  Then one morning, he was pushing a box and walked along after it.  It looked more like the box was slipping away from him and he was moving closer to it to avoid losing his balance.  I didn’t get a chance to capture that moment with photos, but I did spy another occasion captured below.

Walking around the box…

Getting into position…

Ready!

Here we go…

“Whatcha lookin’ at?”

“Yup, I did it!”

The cruising appears to be unintentional.  Right now, Gareth is more interested in learning how to climb the stairs.  Whenever I try to help him practice walking, he just drops back onto his behind and crawls away.

Gareth turned 9 months yesterday. I took him swimming at Ah Koh’s condo and he enjoyed himself immensely. Here’s today’s album:

I realise that I have not been documenting any milestone achievements for Gareth the way I did with Gavin up until now. Ah well, better late than never, so here goes…

Physical:

• crawling around on hands and knees (no longer doing the commando style he started with)
• crawling up the stairs and has made it up to the first landing without stopping (he’s climbed up to the first landing three times in a row so I reckon he can make it all the way upstairs already)
• pulling up to standing and trying to cruise
• he loves to play “chase”
• a pretty tough baby – he’s taken some pretty nasty falls in stride and barely reacts
• also a pretty strong baby – he moves furniture around the room and has a rather tenacious grip on objects

Feeding:

• he likes durians!
• his taste preferences are mostly fruit flavours
• he recently had his first taste of vanilla ice cream – yeah, it’s earlier than I would have liked but that’s a long story
• he loves Mango Magic boost juice!
• he’s a little like Gavin – if he doesn’t like it, he won’t touch it
• the foods that he likes, he can eat until he throws up so you have to stop feeding him even when he appears to want more
• he’s still on the breast during the day and night

Emotional:

• he adores his older brother and they play well together
• he doesn’t like being left alone because he knows the fun is where the crowd is
• he only tolerates the play pen for a while before you have to take him out – unless his brother is in there with him
• he’s generally pretty good with people and seems to be over the stranger anxiety phase
• when he’s tired he’s still Mummy’s boy

Education:

• we’re done with Doman’s Math and Reading programs
• we’re attending TweedleWink once a week
• we’re watching TweedleWink DVDs at home
• just started Shichida’s 65 day Math program
• we read everyday
• we listen to music and dance in the living room
• we play random notes on the piano

Sleep:

• still hovering between two to three naps a day
• still waking up at night, although he can sleep through if I’m next to him

Toilet Training:

• pooped into the toilet twice
• peeing still needs a lot of work

Language:

• he understands Hokkien
• he’s vocalising a lot, but nothing specific yet

Personality:

• he’s demonstrating a pretty fierce temper and screams when he isn’t happy
• loves to play and smiles a lot

Developmental:

• responding well to “no” and can stop himself when you tell him to stop some of the time
• still very oral fixated and puts a lot of things into his mouth to explore them