To Calvin, who is 11 months old today,

Unbelievable:  Almost a year has gone by since you were born!  And you have really made the most of your time here so far.   You started your eleventh month with only two teeth, but now have six, yes six!  There are four on top, and two on the bottom, making for a very adorable lopsided grin.  You also started the month taking a few steps here and there, but now you can walk clear across the room without assistance, and are able to stand straight up right in the middle of the floor - no more crawling over to tall objects to pull yourself up anymore!  This has given you a new sense of freedom, and the smile that decorates your face when you totter around the house is brilliant and endearing!  When we see you doing that we can't help but laugh ourselves.  In fact, we spend a lot more time laughing with you these days.  Your fine motor skills have also advanced and you now use your toys in the more intricate ways in which they were intended to be used.  We love watching you sort shapes, your face showing your deep concentration then breaking into a giggling smile as each of the shapes goes in, just to start over again.

But you aren't the only one learning:  your parents sure have come a long way in the past month, too.  Just a week ago we decided that we could embark on our first family vacation and we loaded up the car and headed to Holland, Michigan, to introduce you to the tulip festival there.  That trip taught us that you are a wonderfully well natured child and a miraculously good sleeper, and that the stuff we pack for you takes up way more space than the stuff we pack for ourselves!  A couple of weeks ago you spiked your first real fever - all the way up to 102.5 - and we were really scared, until a quick call reassured us that the doctors aren't really concerned until 105 degrees.  Yes, we still have a lot to learn about lightening up, but we are working on it, especially in the food department.  Before April you had tried chicken, several standard fruits and green veggies, and a few cereal grains.  Over the past month we have added pork and beef, several new fruits and veggies, and even new spices to your repertoire.  You especially loved the curried chicken, and  also seem to enjoy garlic and cinnamon.  You like flavor, and you like he eating.  You are just full of life and you bring great joy to our days.

A new way to view the world

Or at least a new way to capture our view.  The combination of an increasingly slow camera and an increasingly mobile child finally wore down our patience today.  Turning the camera on takes six seconds alone, then five seconds for it to focus, and another five for it to save the picture to the card before you can start another five seconds of re-focusing to take a second picture.  By this time the kid is gone:  he's walking, remember?  And we are trying to capture the event so we can put it in our scrapbook, but all we get is a burry shot here and there.  So today we spent Jon's lunch hour at the local camera store and came home with a DSLR.  Now, instead of 11 seconds between photos, we can get 2.5 frames taken per second!  That will increase our picture taking over 20 fold!  Watch for results coming soon...

Old camera (that blur is our son...)

New camera...

The three toothed walking wonder

Super Calvin has two new super powers under his belt.  The first is an additional tooth (his top right, and the top left isn't far behind).  Don't ask us why that's a new super power, we just figure that it must be that important because he is walking around showing it off with every chance he gets.  And that brings us to the second new super power - walking.  He's been cruising since before he could crawl, and a couple of weeks ago he started to take a few steps here and there with our encouragement, but he has now entered an entirely new field of motion as he will embark on a journey clear across the room, putting one foot in front of the other very slowly and a little unsteadily, without any encouragement from us at all.  He only walks about a quarter of the time right now - crawling is still the usual mode of transportation - but we figure that it is only a matter of time before it is replaced and our little four legger will join the rest of our species of upright walkers.

First steps

He may be good at rolling, he may be good at crawling, but is he good at walking?  Not really.  But he sure is determined about it - he has now started pushing our hands away when we are holding him. Foolhardy? Perhaps.   See for yourself.

Adding spice to our lives

Or at least to Calvin's.  We got tired of always feeding him just plain pureed fruits and vegetables, so we started adding some natural spices for him to try.  We started this afternoon with cinnamon in the applesauce and, though we were nervous about this transition, the introduction went pretty well.  Actually, we aren't at all certain that he cared one bit about the new flavor - he showed no real preference over bites either with or without the spice in them.  Oh well.  In general he seems awfully distracted these days when we are inside, but who can blame him?  Now that he's had a taste of playing outside in the yard and going to watch the ducks at the pond (which he invariably laughs at), why on earth would he want to play inside?  Seriously, the last few days it has really felt like spring, possibly even summer, finally arrived.  Of course, we can't really say "finally arrived," because it's still March and this is still Michigan.  Heck, around here spring can't really be considered late until June, so the recent days of sunny and seventy have been a wonderful treat.  Unfortunately, it looks like we will be saying goodbye to summer and hello to spring over the next week or so, but that was to be expected.  Calvin will just have to go back to being happy with his indoor play.