Crawling, Standing, Cruising; Counting, Drumming

(Written by Martin as an email, and modified/enhanced for the blog by Beth)

Dominic is very mobile now, crawling anywhere he chooses, pulling himself into a stand whenever a suitable surface appears (he's particularly fond of looking into the bathtub), and starting to cruise, especially along the side of the bathtub, always from right to left at the moment. He also enjoys sitting on the kitchen floor and pushing his high chair back and forth on the tiles, usually with a huge grin.

He still loves to wiggle his arms and legs, no matter where he is.  Here he is doing so in a ball pit:

Sadly Eddie has developed a habit of throwing things, so we've had to put the Ammunition Pit away for a while.

This weekend Martin took Dominic for his first pool swim at a saltwater pool, Tamarack, where Eddie had her first swim lessons aged 6 months. At 8 1/2 months Dominic is that much bigger, and also that much more alert and aware of his surroundings. After 1/2 an hour he'd done looking at all the other people and absorbing the strange sights and smell, and after an hour when we were done he was seeming very comfortable in the water, and kicking and waving his arms a little. Martin hopes to take him again in a week or two.

Eddie continues to enjoy pointing out numbers and letters she finds in the world. On a recent shopping trip she had Martin lift her up to the grocery scales so she could push down on the scale very carefully, then point to the number the scale was pointing to and give the sign for it, then push harder for the next number, and so on. She still prefers to say letters but sign numbers, yet Martin has heard her say numbers up to ten, she just does it on her own terms.

Eddie recently had another go on her drum set, one of the first times since her ear surgery.  She didn't protest wearing the ear protection this time.  The repeated fluid and associated temporary deafness has answered the question of why she was sometimes happy to wear the protection and other times fought it completely.  Of course - if her ears were clogged, she didn't need the protection!