10/12 4 months, 3 weeks, 3 days

I apologize for missing a post, again. It is my intention to post every Sunday, but the past two have been unkind to me.

Griffin is "talking" more and more. The sounds he makes are more like singing, though. Pleasant to listen to, and amusing to watch. You can keep him going by repeating the sounds back to him, or by simply talking back to him. I've only used English, but I guess French or another language would work too. He loves having people talk to him, or sing to him. I want to start using sign language, but I'm going to have to refresh my memory, I haven't used it in so long I'm rusty.

He is starting to understand the principles of crawling. Previously, when put on his belly, he would curl himself up with his legs pointed towards the ceiling, and rock back and forth on his stomach. This makes him angry, and after a minute, he would be shouting in frustration. Lately though, he has been making some leaps in how crawling is actually accomplished, and is trying to get his knees up underneath him.

A lot of this I attribute to the playmat his Grandma Maryanne got for him. Instead of immediately hating being on his belly, he now has a mirror and some other fun things to look at while he is on his tummy, giving him time to get up on his arms and look around. When we encourage him at that, he gets bold, and tries other things with his legs. He has a lot of leg strength, too. He can stand for a short time with minimal support.

He eats his rice cereal like a champ. Some things we've looked into suggest that he doesn't really need to wait on this time table for things like vegetables and fruit. So we're thinking of squash, early.

We need to get him a new carseat, because he is rushing towards 20 pounds. Grandmoo (my mother), has said she'll get him one for Christmas, early (when she comes for Thanksgiving). That will be fantastic. He is so incredibly large.