I don't know if somehow the sunshine in Florida is more potent than what we get here in Austin (it seems unpossible, but you never know), or if the sea air had some strange effect on his system (he does sleep better any day we go to the beach...), but Ollie moved another few notches up the baby development ladder last week.

First, he went from being intensely frustrated by being on his stomach, to crawling (army crawling, although he's also pushing up on hands/knees and hands/feet, so it won't be long now...). He's pretty fast when he wants to be; it's kind of amusing to see him charging across the floor like an inchworm on amphetamines.

Second, he's improved a lot on pulling himself up; he can get from sitting to standing by using the coffee table, which is a pretty good feat as he can't quite reach the top of the coffee table from sitting, he has to kind of get up on his knees first. He loves standing up, especially if there's a window he can look out of. He stood at the window of the airport for probably an hour, just watching trucks and people go by.

Third, not one but two new teeth popped out last week, one on the bottom and one on the top (making the score 3 and 1, which looks a little odd ;). He has another top tooth about to show as well.

Fourth, he's really getting good at feeding himself cheerios, small bits of bread, fruit, etc. He still gets a little overenthusiastic and chokes a bit now and again, but the difference from before is pretty stark.

There are lots of pictures and some video, but I have to dig out my digital photo studio software since my PC is packed up right now, and the video will have to wait until I get it unpacked. The house is virtually empty, but it's under contract and as long as we can find a new place soon enough we'll be able to unpack everything in a few weeks.

Other random notes: We flew first class on the first leg of our flight back from Tampa, because as we were leaving Tampa the first time our plane developed problems (the kind that lead to emergency vehicles following you down the runway "just in case") and we had to turn around. Our replacement flight went through Chicago and since it was full we ended up with a free upgrade to FC. Super-snotty flight attendant aside, it was really nice--free alcohol and a hot dinner go a long way to making air travel more bearable, and on our second leg (back in coach again) we had an empty seat between us that Ollie could sack out in. So although we got home eight hours later than planned, it actually didn't go all that badly, I guess.

Ollie pulled himself up from sitting to standing without assistance for the first time this weekend. He did it on a cardboard box full of books first, and then yesterday he was playing with some toys in his crib while I folded his laundry. I turned around and he was standing up, holding the edge of his crib, and grinning at me. So we had to lower the mattress, so he can't hurl himself out of it just yet. :)

It's pretty cool to see him learning this stuff; I know he's behind pretty much all of his peers in mobility development (which is apparently fairly normal for smaller babies; Ollie has the additional disadvantage of a huge noggin, since his body weight is 5th percentile but his head is 50th...), but I think he's going to catch up pretty quick.

Part of it is that when Jen and/or I are watching him, he seems less inclined to really try stuff. Perhaps we're a little too eager to help him out, or he just expects us to help for some other reason; he seems to have a lot more "stick-to-it-iveness" when we're not looking. Which does make it hard to capture these moments on camera. ;)

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). Bold what you have read, italicise those you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.


Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
*The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
*American Gods
*Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
*Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
*Brave New World
*The Fountainhead
*Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
*The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
*1984
Angels & Demons.
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
*Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
*Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes : A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present
*Cryptonomicon
*Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
*Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
*The Hobbit
White Teeth
*Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers