Well, it's official: Houdini is honest-to-goodness mobile. He's been doing this half scoot, half rock, half crawl (wait, the math didn't work out--well, you know what I mean) for at least a month now, getting from one end of the comforter on the family room floor to the other. The last couple of days, though, he's doing the perfectly coordinated, opposing leg/arm movement and it is getting alarmingly faster by the hour.
We also let him 'discover' the door to the lower right cabinet in the entertainment center yesterday (it's been hiding behind a big floor pillow that we'd lean against everytime he headed that way) and not only was he delighted to see it behind the pillow, he ecstatic when he was allowed to grab the knob and open it, which is aparently is baby heaven in his book. We even let him topple some of the DVDs in the cabinet.
Other parents would probably frown at us ecouraging him to get into places he shouldn't and because we're not really baby proofing the room. I have my own thoughts on baby proofing, which basically boils down to protecting him from the very obvious dangers (in our case, the spiral stairs, the stone encased circular fireplace in the living room and the stone drop pit where the fire stove is in the family room, plus a couple more places) and just keeping an eye and teaching you rkids how to be around all the other 5000 items and places people baby-proof. My parents never baby proofed anything and I was a real nosy kid, and I did okay.
Honestly, I could care less about what other people think of our parenting style. We've already broken the key tenets of 'good parenting' other people swear by: we let him watch DVDs while he is eating, so he will actually eat; we more often than not hold him when he naps, because he like to drink when he's sort of asleep, unlike when he is awake and refuses to drink; we let him sleep in our bed at night because it easier for me to wake up and give him an after midnight drink that way; we let him go pretty much wherever he wants on the floor when he is playing, to make up for the extra time we have to have him in the highchair, eating. Oh, and we only have him eat what he likes, none of this try different things 15 times and the baby will adapt--if he doesn't like it after 2 times, it's out, because we don't have the luxury of trying and pitching. Actually, if I ever bring these things up with anyone in conversation, I don't even offer the accompanying explanations--I do what is best for my child's primary health and what people think is so off my radar it's not even worth mentioning.
He's also saying the mamama and dadada and bababa and nanana sounds quite clearly, and while I realize it is wishful thinking, he does say the mamama noise a lot more when I am holding him (he likes to smoosh his face into my shoulder and say it). He's also said 'DAAAAAAAA' in this questioning, annoyed, almost teenage-like inflected tone twice when Lemel walked away from him. It's all coincidence, we know, but it doesn't stop us from grinning like fools when he does it and encouraging him for the next half hour to "do it again, do it again".
Once thing I do know he fully understands is "You're okay, you're okay, look into my eyes". Often, when he doesn't want to eat, he'll start gagging himself on his food and I started saying those words to him, and trying to get in his line of vision to distract him, about two month ago. Now, when any of us says it, he'll turn around and look you straight in the eye (although he responds to me the best).
We're also teaching him to laugh at his farts. Poor little kid, because he doesn't drink a lot of fluids, he gets constipated. Farts are a good sign that his digestive system is working and we started clapping and laughing a while ago when he'd let one loose and it sort of became the thing to do. He actually gets upset if we don't cheer one, now. At some point we'll have to undo this learned behavior, but for now it is pretty funny and we'll take funny wherever we can.
