A post only a grandparent could love

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Watching video of other people's kids is usually boring. This is particularly true of babies, who don't yet say funny things but simply do things all the rest of us have been able to do ever since before we can remember. Youtube hits of babies laughing uncontrollably when paper tears can be, I admit, addictive and are the exception that proves the rule.

That said, as a daughter who lives far from her parents, I feel a responsibility to record and share the significant first-year milestones, and so I'm pleased to report on a few of Hyrum's new tricks.

First, I have to say that catching him in the act of any of these accomplishments is a little bit like glimpsing the Loch Ness monster. They say all babies are different, and they are right! Evelyn wanted to show off the minute she figured out something new. Hyrum likes to practice when he thinks you're not looking, wait until you least expect it, catch your gaze from across the room after checking to make sure you're not near a camera, lock eyes with you, and then very slowly and deliberately execute his new moves. He did it with babbling. Then, last week, he randomly started waving at me (more of a hand raise and thumb wave, but I knew what he meant). Once he saw that I had processed and understood what he was doing, he would stop.

Yesterday at the park, I noticed him clapping in the stroller while he thought I was chatting with my friends. I finally tricked him into letting me get it on film today only by turning the video on and off so many times that he lost track. Score one for mom! I can still pull one over on my almost-ten-month-old!

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, Hyrum has perfected his dinner self-feeding abilities. He's spent the last week out eating his sister at dinner almost every night and is in that lovely pre-toddler phase of being not at all picky. Spaghetti with mushrooms? Inhaled.

Corned beef and cabbage? Decimated.

Finally, and most excitingly, Houston, we have mobility. Of a sort.

(Tuesday, March 16, 2011 - 9 months and 26 days)

Our attempts to transition this activity to carpet met with resistance (literally, from friction) too great to overcome.

In order to celebrate all these milestones, I took myself to a movie yesterday without my children. Notice the late morning start time, the coordinating $6 ticket price, and the fact that it is not an animated feature. All of which combine to make another kind of milestone.

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Final Edit: While I was writing this post, Hyrum rolled, for the first time, from back to front. Four to six months late, but I'll take it. Go Hyrum!