Walt Roberts is here!

This morning, our friend Noah and his wife Julie gave birth to their second child, Walter Douglas Roberts.  He's a healthy eight-pounder, and he and his parents are doing fine.  There are some pictures on their blog, noahandjulieroberts.blogspot.com . We're hoping and praying that Walt will grow up as happy and healthy as James is.  

Speaking of James, he is quickly approaching his first birthday.  This Saturday, the relatives visit, and he will get to have some cake.  At the risk of spoiling the surprise, I hear there is a Noah's Ark theme.  

James continues to learn new stuff every day.  Now that the weather is better (it rained for a solid week here), we have been going outside again.  James has learned to kick a ball, which is impressive in and of itself, but it also shows how well he has mastered walking.  Here we are in the driveway, kicking the ball cousin Hannalee got for James this summer:

James also enjoys pushing things.  We went strolling around the Home Depot the other day, and James pushed the cart for me.  He couldn't reach the handle, but he pushed from the bottom of the basket quite well.  He also pushes his own stroller when we go to the neighborhood playground.   Pretty soon, we'll let him loose with the lawn mower.  

Today James learned how light switches work.  Daddy demonstrated 'on' and 'off' a couple of times, then held James up and let him try. James quickly mastered the up/down motion, and proceeded to create a strobe-light effect in the bathroom.  He would still be doing it if Daddy didn't get tired of holding him up.  James is getting heavy.  

Speaking of which, James's eating technique has improved tremendously.  He keeps things in his mouth now (he used to let about half of every spoonful dribble out onto his chin), and he is chewing quite well with his two teeth.  Meme (Daddy's mother) got James some crunchy snacks, which have helped him improve his chewing.  Now he eats them all the time, which is good, because it keeps non-food items (shoes, cellphones, the cat) out of his mouth.  We were kind of worried that constantly feeding him high-calorie formula to bulk him up would impede his normal-food-eating development, but he seems to be doing fine.  

Less than a week until James is a year old!

  

Almost a year old

James and Daddy went to the Georgia Aquarium last Friday.  James had a great time, although Daddy didn't let him run around free as much as he wanted to.  He is confident enough in his walking now that he doesn't like Daddy holding his hand all the time.  Daddy doesn't care; James has to hold Daddy's hand when we're in a big crowd.  Nonetheless, we both enjoyed seeing everything in the aquarium.  When we left, we went to the grassy area between the aquarium and the World of Coke, and James chased pigeons around.   

James enjoyed the pigeon hunt more than anything in the aquarium.  Next time, Daddy will save the $35 and just find a flock of birds somewhere.  

James is almost a year old, and we are eagerly anticipating his birthday parties - one at home and one in Augusta.  He is growing up quickly, and we will take the time on his birthday to see how much he has changed since he came into the world last October 4th.  Thankfully we have lots of pictures and videos of his first year, so we can remember, and so we can embarrass him later.  

As seen above, James is an excellent walker now.  He is steady enough that he rarely falls, and when he does, he gets himself up without any difficulty.  He also walks without concentrating solely on walking - he can pick up a toy and play with it, or drink from his sippy cup, or try to grab the cat's tail, all while walking perfectly fine.  This is fun for Daddy, because now James and Daddy can play hide and seek.  Daddy will run into the kitchen, and James will hunt him down.  Daddy will scurry off into the bedroom, and James is right on his tail.  Daddy will try to take a bathroom break, and James will ignore the game-off and chase Daddy into the bathroom.  We're going to have to work on that.  Another walking skill he is mastering is walking backwards.  The past couple of days, he has been practicing:  he will take a few steps forward, then stop and take a few steps backward, then forward again.  It kind of looks like he's practicing ballroom dancing.  

We have determined that James has started to actually talk.  He has been making all sorts of sounds for quite a while, but it does appear that he is now associating a particular sound with a particular thing.  The first one was 'mama,' which was the first sound he practiced saying over and over again.  Now he only says it when he sees Mommy, or sometimes when he's getting his diaper changed.  Not sure what that's about.  But he definitely means 'Mommy' when he says 'mama' - when Mommy comes home from work, he holds out his hands to her and says 'mama' over and over again.  Mommy likes that.  The other semi-word James says is 'cah', to identify the cat, Spooky.  He's clearly talking about the cat with this word, because he only says it when he's chasing Spooky around, trying to grab his tail.  And he says it with tremendous enthusiasm.  It's also possible that Daddy has been dubbed 'gagga' by James, because James does say that a lot around Daddy.  However, 'gagga' might also mean milk, or book, or any number of other things that James sees every day.  But it means something, that much we are sure of.   

Labor Day

Last Sunday we went to the annual Labor Day weekend family event at Daddy's uncle Roy's house.  Uncle Roy lives on the edge of Clark Hill Lake, and his yard is a perfect place for a big family gathering. It is especially exciting for eleven-month-olds who think leaves are really great toys. 

James walked around in the leaves for half an hour, and would have stayed there all day, but we had to eat lunch.  

He was a big fan of the macaroni.