Posted by Daddy: Linus endured his first Christmas quite well, raking in a haul of pressies which figuratively impressed the pants off his old man. The three of us stayed the night at Granny and Pop-pop’s in Mosgiel and Linus went down like a charm at his normal bed-time. Previous attempts to put him down in the portacot had ended in tears, and quite a bit of screaming.

He did have a bit of a grisly night though (I suspect it may have been teething related) and that combined with a late night, early morning and the first public screening of my home brew went quite a way to making me a grumpy riser. Linda was reluctant to tell me the time and quite rightly so because when I first asked her it was about 7:30am. Call me soft, but I like my sleep.

We had a great morning and Christmas lunch in Mosgiel, and Linus had great fun ripping paper off presents and tallying up his loot. We then shot back into town to prepare for the arrival of Linda’s side of the family. They arrived at about 4pm and we got into the unwrapping again, Linus making sure he got a completely unbeatable high score, ripping and exclaiming and paying more attention to the boxes than their contents.

We put Linus down at his regular bedtime and then settled down for the evening into the PS2 console game Buzz. Linus woke at about 11pm and came through to see what was going on (a Christmas treat) and was absolutely mesmerised by the tele and the activities in the room.

We finally wound up just after midnight, and Linus went to bed without fuss, most probably dreaming of ripping paper and sucking on plastic coated candy canes.

Age = 10 months 6 days

I haven’t blogged for a while, so there must be something to report…

Food

Linus is eating three meals a day almost every day now. It’s generally some sort of mush fed to him by Mummy, Daddy, or Nana on a spoon. I’m being a little slack about feeding him finger food or teaching him to feed himself from a spoon – it’s just so messy!

New Hobby

Linus also has a new hobby: standing. I know, I know, to you and me that doesn’t sound like a mild amusement, let alone a hobby, but Linus can stand up (against a chair) for 10 minutes at a time and not get bored. He’s learning lots of little things that will all turn into standing unsupported and walking eventually. His recent developments have included:

• pulling himself to standing quickly and easily on almost any item of the right height;
• learning to drop to the ground – either forwards or sideways – from standing without hurting himself;
• moving around objects;
• standing while supporting himself with just one hand;
• moving from one object over to another.

What an Arm!

Yesterday Linus learned another new trick: throwing! He had a marvellous time picking up various toys and throwing them away from him. He enjoyed it even more when we got out some noisy toys for him to throw, and when two toys hit each other – WOW! He’s also enjoying playing with the box of Duplo at the moment, probably because of the great amount of noise it makes.

Age = 9 months 23 days

New Moves

Linus is getting a lot more bumps and bruises these days. He has crawling completely mastered, but the new skill he’s working on is pulling himself up to standing. To be fair, he has the “pulling himself up” part well sussed – it’s the descents that cause him some grief!

New Moves Part II

I really should have blogged this a week ago, because since then he’s developed further. Yesterday he pulled himself to standing while holding on to the TV cabinet. All par for the course. But then he let go of the cabinet, turned around to face us, and dropped gracefully (compared to his usual descents, anyway!) to the floor, catching himself with his hands as if he’d done it a million times before.

Pain All Around

The falls Linus is suffering at the moment are a pain for him – the pain for me is that his preferred support for pulling himself up is my legs. It’s very cute… a couple of times a day. Or even a couple of times an hour. But combined with him grizzle-grizzle-grizzling and me trying to get something cooked, it’s a major inconvenience.

PS

Oh, and I also underestimated his crawling speed last weekend and let him fall down the back step from the kitchen. Thanks to a thick door mat between him and the concrete, the worst he suffered was a fright! Bad mummy