Seven months

Here we are, marking another month's passage. During this month, Henry has continued his explosion of development. Every day it seems like he's able to put more and more together cognitively. His physical development also continues to expand rapidly. Some of the things that have amazed me recently include...

Henry's recognition of every day sights and sounds, and their causes/effects. This morning, when there was a commercial for T-Mobile on the radio, he perked up and looked at me expectantly. I have a cell phone with the T-Mobile ring. When he heard the ring on the commercial, he thought it was my phone. Or so it seemed, anyhow. The most touching recognition, however, has to be when Henry hears Brian's keys in the door at the end of the day. He clearly knows that when the door opens, he'll see his daddy. And he gets very, very excited about this. Henry's recognition also includes familiar faces. He especially loves his cousins, Evan and Liam, and reacts to seeing them with a lot of excitement as well.

Henry's developing awareness of the relationship between cause and effect continues to impress me in other ways, too. A few days ago when he was in his exersaucer, he made a very cute discovery. There is a mirror on the exersaucer that was pointed toward the window. Light coming through the window was reflected from the mirror onto the floor in front of Henry. To Henry's delight, he realized that when he jumped and jiggled in the exersaucer he could make the light on the floor move. He had a great time continuing this little game of jumping, watching the light move, smiling, pausing and then repeating it.

As far as physical changes in the past month or so, Henry's continuing to grow bigger and stronger every day. I'm not sure of his height or weight measurements, but when carrying him around he sure feels bigger. And he's moving, moving, moving all day long. As I've written before, Henry now crawls with ease and pulls himself up to standing very frequently. In the past few days he's also begun to show an interest in climbing. He can make it up a few stairs by himself (with parental spotting, of course), and has attempted to climb over his standing block in the playroom a few times. This has happened when Henry peeked over the other side of the block (really a big plastic container we used for clothes) and saw something he wanted. Rather than cruise around to the other side, he's taken the most direct route and proceeded to climb onto the top of the block. We do our best to stop him from plunging headfirst off the other end. So far, so good. Henry's fine motor skills are also developing nicely. We've begun giving him cereal puffs to work on his pincer grasp. He's got a ways to go before he really gets the hang of it, but at least he gets the idea, and he usually finds some technique to get the puffs into his mouth.

Finally, to (coincidentally) mark his 7-month birthday tomorrow, Henry will be transitioning to a big boy car seat. Exciting! It's hard to believe now that Henry ever looked tiny in his first car seat. But he did. All 10 pounds and 4 ounces of him.

Here's another cute pic of the adventures in finger foods. You can see the sheer excitement on Henry's face at the scattering of star-shaped puffs on his tray. And in his hair.
And now, up, up...
And busted in the act!