More Tidbits

In no particular order...

--Nathan has another tooth. It's another bottom one to complete the set of four on the bottom. This brings the total to eight. He's also working on those molars--still--and is teething badly enough some days to keep him awake at night and cause a small fever (at least that's what I hope has caused the fever in the last week). I think we'll all celebrate when those finally cut. Here's a picture of the next-to-the-last tooth to cut:
--He's also still not quite crawling yet and doesn't seem the least bit motivated to learn the proper way to do it. He gets everywhere he wants to go with the bear crawl/scoot, so why bother learning the real way? I finally got some pictures of this scoot move.

You can see he's trying to stand up and will push that cute booty way in the air sometimes. He doesn't have the balance in his hips and torso yet, though, so he can't stand all the way up. Instead he'll just fall back down on the bottom and scoot a little farther.

He obviously loves being mobile either way. Don't you love the new way he's smiling too? It looks like a cross between a smile and a grimace because of how he scrunches up his nose. I love it!

--Patrick has named his dinosaur with a real name at last: Joshua. My theory behind the name is that he's finally figured out who else we're talking to when we scold him with his full name, Patrick Joshua. He's Patrick, so whoever else is with him when he gets in trouble must be Joshua. Well, the dinosaur is always with him, so therefore he must be Joshua. Matt's theory is funnier, though. He thinks Patrick named the dinosaur Joshua so that when we scold him with both names he can blame the dinosaur instead. "It wasn't Patrick this time, it was Joshua!"

--Nathan has started pulling up entirely on his own. Before he loved to pull up on our fingers, but I know I was giving him some support and helping him balance. Now he can do it on his own given the right environment. I suspected the enclosed play area might just provide that for him.

This was the very first time it happened. We had just dropped Patrick off at school for his first day and I set Nathan in his pen to play for a few minutes. I looked away for a minute, and this is what I saw when I looked back. The way he's kind of clinging to the side makes me think of the Spiderman song for some reason. You can tell he's pleased with himself. He does this regularly now. The funniest was this morning when Patrick was in "real time-out" (versus "play time-out," what Patrick calls the play area) right next to Nathan in the play area, and Nathan pulled up right next to where Patrick was standing. They were just inches apart with only the gate thing in between them, both of them hanging onto it.

--Patrick is learning so much at school. He's been trying to tell me some about it, but his limited vocabulary leaves me confused most of the time. So far I have figured out that they color at least some days, he "sleeps tight" during the day, and he likes his peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich at lunch. He always makes sure to tell me all about what he ate for lunch, as though I hadn't packed it for him myself.

In the meantime, Nathan and I have been having fun on our own during school days. Yesterday we headed to Target to pick up a few birthday presents to hide away until the boys' birthdays in a few weeks. That is an outing I wouldn't dare try to do alone with both boys, so it is fun to get to do things like that when only Nathan is around. It will be interesting to see what we can find to do with ourselves tomorrow when Patrick is back at school.