Thomas at Ten Months

Wow, not long now and we'll be celebrating Thomas' first birthday (for which we are contemplating a big family BBQ - assuming the weather improves)! The time has just absolutely *flown*...considering how tiny and helpless he was when he first appeared, the change in this extremely short period of time is (to say the least) pronounced...He is now fully mobile, crawling at the speed of light and able to pull himself to standing on any available object, including my legs-

- when he makes it to a bit of furniture then he does what is known among the baby community as "cruising" along (obviously not in any sort of gay/swinging way), carefully navigating corners between objects (his success rate is about 98%, falls are extremely rare, only really happening if something unexpectedly moves) relatives have confidently announced he'll be walking unaided before his birthday (and when that happens it won't be Baby Thomas any more, but Toddler Thomas)...

This, unfortunately, means that everything that had to be moved up out of harms way for crawling has now had to be moved up yet *again* (or hidden behind big cushions) as his reach is pretty impressive...he can help himself to any food and drink put before him (lifting the cup up himself to drink) and he now has six incredibly sharp teeth (when he isn't teething he is happy to brush himself with his little toothbrush) -

- which he uses with lethal efficiency to chew everything up...he understands "No" if you put enough vocal force behind it (he will look at you, judge your level of seriousness, and then stop and turn around if he is after something he knows he shouldn't be), he understands "Want to come up?" (and gets excited about it), Dances to music (an adorable little jiggle), has learned that if he puts his finger (or food) into his mouth when he is talking and wiggles it about that it sounds funny...oh and the last new thing (that occurs to me as I write this) is that he has had his first little bruise (actually, it's quite impressive that he made it all the way to ten months old before managing to hurt himself in any meaningful way!), caused by collision with a table leg as he tried to pull himself up on it - we had lots of miserable tears followed by a great big bump on his head (which went down as quickly as it came up) followed by a straight line mark in the shape of the offending object...he didn't go near the table again after that, so at least he learned his lesson... ;)

Let's see what happens next! :)