Officially a Toddler

I didn't mean for it to happen at all. You see, I captured his very first time walking by himself completely by accident. I grabbed the camera because he was twirling the duster around and sweeping the floor with it. It was too cute to pass up. The rest is history. I admit, my heart skipped a beat watching him take those first steps into a new era even though I had been expecting it for some time. It was a bit awe-inspiring and I could hardly contain myself. I called Mr, Cobra, who was still at work, just to ask him when he'd come home because Dexter had just walked. Later, he demonstrated an even better version of his walking abilities, just for dad, with a 16 step jaunt with the duster across the living room. Tonight, we got him to walk all by himself, no duster, just some cheering. Watch out Squee, he will be chasing you in no time!

Time has flown by and finally my schedule is loosening up. I have 2 sites launching in the next 5 days. I was the designer on both and did most of the project management as well. That's really too much work for one person. Plenty of times, I wanted to tear out my hair for being pulled in 4 different directions at once—all with immediate requests, but now it's over and I can start to pace myself. On top of that, we had every single client pay late. Three of the five late payments showed up on the same day. That has never happened before—maybe one will be a day or two late, but never 5 at once! That's when it sucks being a business owner.

Dexter has been particularly nice to me by sleeping well the last couple nights. I'm not sure when that will end—probably tonight! ;) After quite a few nights of the restless tossing and turning and waking up every couple hours, the last couple nights have been incredibly refreshing because he's been sleeping so soundly. His schedule has been way off due to late afternoon naps, so he's been going to bed when we go to bed at 10:30-11:00pm. Even when he did awake in the middle of the night, he promptly went back to sleep. He even slept in his crib until 6am this morning and when he awoke, I put him in bed with me to sleep till 8am. It felt like sleeping in compared to the usual 6am baby-alarm.

I also forgot to mention that we made it to the movie theater to see Wall-e with Dexter. It was his first movie in a theater. He did ok. His attention span lasted pretty much through the trailers and maybe the first 10 minutes of the movie before I had to plug him up with a pacifier to keep him from crying. He lasted about 20 minutes before conking out. He slept for about an hour. Soundly enough even, for me to pass him off to Mr. Cobra because my arm fell asleep. He woke up just in time for the movie's climax and he laughed in all the wrong places. He started getting squirrely, so I got up to take him out just as the credits started rolling. We made it through a WHOLE movie! Mr. Cobra wants to keep going, but my nerves were so frayed that I felt like I just wanted to crawl up and take a nap.

Last Saturday, we went to Henry's house. Henry is suddenly standing, waving, crawling, clapping and I swear that's all been in the last 6 weeks. What a change in that little guy! I was certain that he was going to start walking before Dexter because he was standing so well. They are starting to interact a little more. Dexter likes to play with Henry's toys. Henry likes to watch Dexter. They had a tug of war going on at one point because they both wanted the same toy. It will be fun to watch them grow up.

It just amazes me how each baby develops on their own timeline. One starts standing (without pulling up) by herself at 8 months; another nearly skipped crawling, one walks at 8 months and another at 14 months. I think walking is a major milestone because it's the last frontier, so to speak, on their way to independence. It gave me the warm-n-fuzzies to see Dexter finally walk. At the same time, I'm a little sad because he won't need me as much. My back is happy, my arms are happy, my heart is happy for him and sad for me. I just lost my baby because he grew into a toddler.