standing up

I love the look Julius has on his face after he stands up. He looks all around with a huge grin, seeing, I suppose, if everyone notices. Then, when we look excited, he gets even happier, and then we laugh, and then he gets crazily excited, and then he loses his grip and falls down! But he's resilient. :)

big man

not only is julius scooting around the house at a record pace, now he has started pulling up! this afternoon i caught him standing on top of a game box in front of big sister's toy bin. apparently he was trying to get to some of her toys!
he also loves to scale mommy or daddy when we lay on the floor next to him.
i honestly think he might bypass crawling just so he can chase sylvia around more effeciently.

julius will be 8 months old on valentine's day and it blows my mind! where has all the time gone?
real quickly let me add a few things:
-his favorite food right now is avocado but he's also quite fond of sweet potatoes and *cring* french fries
-he can say 'ba ba,' 'da da' and 'ma ma'
-when i hold him his new favorite thing to do is push off of me with his arms and rock back and forth and then slam his mouth on me and blow a raspberry. whenever he does this he just laughs and laughs afterwards.

impression

tonight julius fell asleep while i held him and stayed that way for roughly 2 hours.
i had already had a unsuccessful lay down attempt and i didn't want to risk it again.
halfway through his nap i move my arm out from under him and placed his head on the pillow in my lap.
now, it's quite common for his ear to leave a small print on my arm after i've nursed him for awhile but because i had held him in that position for so long the ear print was quite detailed. i found myself checking it over and over until it finally faded away. even now, hours later, there is still a bit of soreness in that part of my arm.
it feels wonderful.

daddy, daddy!

Not only can Julius say "da-da," he actually uses it to refer to me! His favorite situation is to be held by mommy and entertained by daddy. I'll talk to him for a second, and after I walk outside his field of vision, he'll look all around and say, "dada? dada! dada!" Every time I walk away he'll call for me again!
The best part of this is that he can be happy to see me when I get home from work, telling me "dada!" when I walk in. I remember when Sylvia was first able to tell me she was glad I was home. It's still the highlight of my day.
The worst part, though, is that he'll look for me sadly while I'm at work. "Dada?..."

Shortly after writing a draft of this post, I held Julius for an hour to get him to sleep. Appparently he loves or is bored by early-80s Genesis: if I wear him in the carrier for a while and sway around while Abacab plays it puts him right to sleep!

going, going...

julius has been scooting and pushing up for a little while now but recently he has added backwards crawling to his catalog. it's entertaining to watch how quickly he's able to get around and to know that this is only the beginning.

we re-arranged the livingroom, after taking down the christmas tree, to make more room for crawling, scooting and rocking. the only con here is that occassionally he looses his balance and falls flat on his face.

oh, and another milestone--blowing rasberries and talking. his babble is becoming more fine tuned and he's also learning that blowing rasberries is funny. he loves to blow them on me when i'm trying to nurse him to sleep, what a silly boy!

baby talk

We decided to call "hey" as Julius' first word. He says it often enough, in the right context, and with consistent inflection.
However, I'm pretty sure he also said something like, "heeey, daa, ah wuuh uu."

domo arigato mr roboto

lately julius' movements have become more tight and fast. he's in an amazing stage where each move is so carefull constructed that you can almost predict what he'll do next.
he notices the phone in your hand and then you see his eyes widen as his arm pulls backwards. fast and quite robotic, his arm propels his hand forward and *smack* contact with the phone(or whatever object is in question.)

i just love to watch him go.