Snapshots

Still no words. But when you ask him, "Hey Ben, when are you going to learn to talk?" he puts on this sweet, half-whispery voice and says, "Da da da da da da da," like: I got yer talking right here, silly adult.

He's been climbing up stairs for months now, but he wasn't going down them, and I was getting tired of schlepping thirty pounds of him every time he needed a diaper change, so we did a little crash course (without any actual crashes, thank goodness) in knees-and-belly descent last week, and now he goes down faster than he goes up.

He went trick-or-treating for the first time this Halloween, which meant I went trick-or-treating for the first time in more than 20 years. He was kind of perplexed by the entire ordeal, but totally game, and he definitely approved of the candy part. His enthusiasm was underlined by the howling and grabby-pointing after the pumpkin bucket when I disappeared it.

He very much enjoys watching the Life of Mammals dvds and slideshows of various animal groups on Flickr, especially Wild Animals in Action, both of which I heartily recommend for toddler-adult entertainment. He likes to point out each and every critter and say "Dah!"

He's all about cars and trucks lately, and in fact just walked in here with a toy car in each hand and then took them both over to the stairs to push them around. Walking through a parking lot can include his pointing at every single car we pass and saying, "Dah!"

He is a huge fan of books, and would probably be content to do nothing but bring me one book after another to read until we ran out of books, and then he'd want to start over at the beginning. Granted, I'm not that familiar with other toddlers' reading habits, but he seems remarkably patient with wordy books (like, say, Ping or Ferdinand) and also remarkably gentle with paper (i.e., not board) books. He will often amuse himself for long periods of time just sitting on the floor and paging through books, sometimes da-da-da-ing to himself.

He recently learned how to dip french fries in ketchup, and now he dips whatever into whatever else at every opportunity.

Snapshots

He got his first hard-soled shoes this week -- before I'd only ever had him in Robeez -- and he walks so deliberately in his new sandals. Stomp, stomp, stomp, lifting higher with the right foot than the left, partly delighted and partly perplexed by the new sensation.

It's not that he never noticed the stairs, but they hadn't been much of a draw before we got back from Wisconsin. Now he's all about the climbing. Andy and I make lots of Everest jokes about summiting without supplemental pants.

For some reason I can't fathom, he often prefers to drink with the sippy spout on the far side of the cup.

He likes to be upside down. The phrase "upside down" was one of the first things we noticed he understood, because if you said it, he'd throw his head back, waiting for you to make the rest of his body follow. He does this a lot.

He's started to give kisses. Really romantic kisses, where he basically opens his mouth, sticks his tongue out a bit, and leans in. They're a bit anticlimactic: he basically just presses his slightly open mouth on you for a second. Still, wow, so sweet. He also bumps foreheads and rubs noses.