Walking in its many forms (and first steps)!!!

Anyone who has spent much time around Evan has gotten to witness his "knee-walking" technique. This evolved from his realization that it is difficult to crawl with things in his hand, but not wanting to walk yet. Both of Evan's Grandmas said that we have to get this on video before he starts walking, and we finally got a good clip . . .

At it turns out, we got this video just in time because Evan took his first steps yesterday!!! One of the parents at daycare has a daughter who also started walking kind of late, and they said that what finally made the difference was having regular shoes instead of the soft-soled slippers. This weekend I picked up some shoes for Evan and we tried them out on Monday. He was much more confident standing with the increased stability, and when we put him a couple of feet away, he walked right back to us!!! The really cool part is that after we changed him into pajamas (we waited until this point to take the video because the outfit he came home from daycare in was pretty ridiculous) and took off the shoes, he was still able to stand and walk! In the second part of the video you can see him shaking his head to say "no, mama, I'm tired of this game" but then he humored me anyway . . . thanks kiddo.

Table manners

For some time now I have been putting off giving Evan a spoon to feed himself. This is largely because I imagine spoonfuls of food being launched catapult-style across the room. But, yesterday we finally decided to go for it and let Evan feed himself some pears (yes, I did intentionally choose something that matches the neutral decor of our apartment . . . just in case). We were pleasantly surprised by his display of table manners.

At some point the feeding experience devolved into the irresistible fun of sticking our fingers in the bowl of pears, but given his squeamishness about certain food textures we decided to let him enjoy. I guess we'll work on that table manner for next time . . .