double digits!

Ezra is 10 months old today, and to celebrate he decided today was the perfect day to start babbling. In fact, I think his first word was "Obama"; guess we know who he's voting for! (Actually, it was an approximate combination of "abba" and "mama"; he seems to prefer to say "abba" :)) It's a bit later than most babies start to babble, so he has a whole repertoire of sounds to choose from, and it's quite adorable.

Adorable isn't even enough to describe Ezra, though. It seems impossible, but he actually gets cuter every day. He's an active little guy, crawling all around the apartment, "reading" books (he can sit and turn pages on books for quite a long time), cruising on the furniture and walls, getting into anything and everything, walking with his walker wagon. He loves to open and close doors, the lid to his toy chest, cabinets and the pantry if we'd let him, drawers, etc. Moving the back of his dump truck up and down falls into the same category. He has also started pushing things along the floor and crawling after them. He likes to eat dinner every evening, especially if he gets Cheerios; he also loves most fruit, spinach, of course avocado, and grains like rice and quinoa. His pincer grasp is well developed, and he insists on feeding himself most of the time! He loves to play pat-a-cake, and is starting to try the "rolling" part with his hands. Oh, and speaking of hands, he likes to randomly thrust his out towards things; Baruch says it's like he is saying, "behold!" Sometimes he adds in a hand gesture that seems to obviously mean "gimme!" :p

As always, Ezra's sense of humor and fun continue to thrive. Peek-a-boo remains a favorite, using doors or walls or toys or just about anything to hide behind. He simply adores music and dancing. A few weeks ago I was sitting in the back room reading and Ezra was playing on the floor, and the radio was on in the front. Ezra crawled away, and after a bit I went to spy on him and he was standing by the radio dancing. I went back to read, and after a bit the radio went to commercials and Ezra crawled back to where I was! We keep music on a lot, and it is so cute to see Ezra on the floor engrossed in books and absent-mindedly dancing when a song with a good beat comes on. Swings and the slide at the playground are great fun, as are long walks or just hanging out outside.

Finally, Ezra has 5 teeth: four on the bottom and one on top. The other top one is very close to breaking through, so within the next few days he should have 6 teeth. His hair is getting long. He is adorably chubby, as always (and mega teething means mega nursing, so he doesn't seem to be in any danger of thinning out any time soon ;)). He's on the shorter side of average, and fits into 12-month clothes quite well.

There is so much to this complex little person that I couldn't possibly type it all out. He's a great little dude!

photo update

Baruch says I don't post photos often enough! Here are some from the past few weeks. 10-month update to follow :)

I have another really cute photo, but he's naked so I'll refrain from posting it ;)

Lag B'Omer Hike

Photos from today

Ezra had a lot of fun chasing big black ants. I've never seen him move so fast!

9 months photos

First, some things I forgot to mention yesterday: Ezra's favorite game is "boom": he throws something on the floor, we say "boom!", he laughs, we hand it back to him, and he throws it on the floor again. He will play this game for as long as we last. Sometimes I just put a lot of things on the coffee table and let him throw them all down one by one. What fun!

Also, I'm often amazed by Ezra's sweetness and maturity. For example, when we're walking outside and I point out flowers, he smiles this sweet little smile, like he really understands that they are beautiful.

Okay, so here are the photos. We went to the park and saw part of a high school baseball game, and I took the pictures there. The lighting was bad (much too bright, with lots of shadows), but it's what I had to work with! None of them were great, so I had trouble deciding which to post.

First, clapping for the game: