Making friends

We walked over to the school yard after supper tonight. Well, actually you ran with a giant grin on and your head tipped back. You still held my hand, but it won't be much longer before you can run without me. Just these past few days you have been walking everywhere and doing a great job of it. Anyway, we were the first ones to the park; the other kids don't usually show up until closer to 6:30. You would squat, pick up handfuls of rocks, drop them and do it all again every few steps. It's so funny how those rocks provide so much joy for you - and so much dust for my clothes. After putting your rocks on the bottom of the slide, we went on the swing briefly before you approached a little blonde guy with a 'safari' shirt on. He was a little taller than you, much more stable and had much bigger hands - maybe 16 or 17 months old. You walked right up to him and touched his shirt, then his cheek. He was a little leary of your forwardness, but you persisted with some short little questioning jabbers. He responded by putting his hand to your chest and you falling down. You picked up a handful of rocks, stood up and tried to share them by putting them in his hand. Apparently, he felt you were too forward again and lightly pushed you down again. You stood back up, really fascinated by this little guy your size and he, too, thought you were interesting. While it was pretty sweet, we finally said bye-bye to the boy and headed for home. How wonderful it is watching you try to communicate with someone new. Just watching you learn to socialize, make friends on your own, just impresses me to no end.

In other happenings, you are the most affectionate, cuddly baby in the whole world. The first thing you do when you wake up in the morning is crawl over and hug your dad - 'cause you haven't seen him in ten and a half hours. You are really full of love these last couple days, even hugging your toys. Even though you are horrified every morning when Nana comes because you know that means mom has to go, she said you were hugging her all day. And last night at supper, you would rather sit with Nana than me. (But that's okay because I know I'm still your favourite!)

You've been sleeping awesome for Nana. After getting up at 6:30 this morning, you napped from 8:15 until 9:45, then again from 1:15 until 3 p.m. And you were asleep by 7:30 tonight. I know that sleep begets more sleep and that makes a happier baby, so this is pretty terrific. Maybe all that walking around takes it toll on you...