eleven months

Fry is growing like a weed and learning so quickly now that I'm sure I'm going to miss a few things! He's turned into quite the chatterbox, though still no words we recognize. His favorite activity right now is turning the pages of his baby books (and dang near tearing them apart, much to my chagrin, but I think they'll hold up in the end) and doing laps in the living room. He will either crawl at lightning speed or grab my hands and take off walking! This also means that we're having to find special hiding places for all our stuff in order to make the living room "baby proof," which is neigh near impossible because of the apartment itself but we're doing what we can.

I've been a big supporter of soft soled shoes but once Fry really started walking we all noticed that he'd drag one of his feet. As much as I hated to do it, he's been walking in traditional baby boots for the last couple of weeks and the dragging has all but disappeared. Once he's more comfortable with walking, we'll go back to soft soled shoes (especially in the house!) and keep the boots for the very worst weather.

Other than that, he's doing super great! He's doing three hours a week at the halte garderie, loves visiting his mémère, and is still super friendly and smiley wherever we go. And now Mommy just has about four weeks to come to terms with the idea that her baby isn't really that much of a baby anymore...

Edited to add: I knew I forgot something. We've also seen signs of a little boy that doesn't like it when he doesn't get his way. The worst is when he's crawling around or getting into something he shouldn't and Papa or I pick him up - that's when we get a little attitude. But what made me remember is that when I picked him up from the halte garderie just now, one of the women told me, "this one's going to have character!" and I thought "oh no, what's he done??" He's got a stubborn streak, which I hope serves him well further on down the road. Now we've just got to figure out how to harness it!