Moose Pajamas

This is actually a post about Robert, but he's wearing the same thing in every picture/movie despite the fact that they were all taken at different times. Apparently, footed moose pajamas make me want to take pictures of him. Hm.

Robert's 9-month checkup was last week. Everything's on track. His weight has returned to the edge of normal (90th percentile) and his length is great (75th percentile). I can tell he wants to communicate more than he's capable of, so we're starting to use sign language with him. I think he gets it. He's shy around strangers, but smiley about it. Sweet boy. Love him tons. He's absolutely in love with Alice and can't get enough of her good-natured, if strange, wrestling technique (i.e. squeezing his hands, pushing his tummy, talking in his face in a silly voice). We got lucky again with this one :)

Now on to his skills:

Robert has grown up around baby dolls and seems to like them. He buries his face into their tummies, claws at their faces, and shrieks excitedly when he sees them. Here's Robert snuggling "his" baby while getting ready for bed (Alice gave it to him for Christmas).

Robert's getting around better than ever. He'll take several steps when we're playing the "walk to me" game, but only recently has he started walking to get places on his own...between bits of furniture and such. Nothing huge. He gets silly proud of himself every time, though. Cracks me up. And it makes me want to call him Mr. Awesome. Last weekend during "Movie and Popcorn Night", he crawled to Bobby, climbed up on his knee, and perched there like a baby bird begging for popcorn scraps (Yes, yes, popcorn is one of the most choked-on items for toddlers and young children. Rest assured, each popcorn kernel was carefully selected and hand-crafted by Bobby to remove every hint of the sharp and chokey fiber before popping it into Robert's mouth where it melted instantly. Bobby couldn't keep up with demand.) 

Robert has seen Alice play with the Magna Doodle once and he's already working hard to master it:

In the background of this clip, you can hear Bobby explaining the end of Shrek 2 to Alice as it plays for "Movie and Popcorn Night." He's trying to keep her from crying. We only do movie and popcorn once a week but somehow it gets mentioned in every post.