Walter - 10 Months

Walty is ten months old. He's five-sixths according to Andrew. To me, he's growing up too fast. He's already more toddler than baby, with his curly hair and wide-eyed, curious way of exploring his world with his poking fingers and eye for the small things on the floor that he shouldn't have.

A lot has changed in just a month. Walter is now cruising everywhere. He pulled himself up to standing very quickly after learning to crawl, and it wasn't long before he figured out how to move while there, too. He is constantly on the go. A year ago I commented on how active he was in-utero. He was by far the most active baby I carried. He's still active, so much so that he's kind of a small baby. He works off all the calories he takes in. He has no baby fat rolls on him. No Michellen baby here. He does eat. In fact, he loves meat. He especially enjoyed some ring sausage we had the other night. He was firing down those little meat cubes faster than we could cut them. Even Frank the Tank seemed impressed by Walt's meat-eating skills.

While I enjoy his activity most of the time, I loathe it when I need him to stay still. The prime example of this is when he's on the changing table. Walter on the changing table is a little like a freshly caught fish - he just flopps around uncontrolably. I remember the other kids doing this, too, but it was never this bad. We try to distract him with toys and belly button zerberts, but nothing seems to work. I have changed a lot of diapers in the past six years, so I like to think I'm pretty good at it. I even got good at putting a diaper on a kid who was running across the room. Putting a diaper on Walty, though, is a whole different challenge.

I get a kick out of Walter. He the first kid in our house who likes his baby toys. With Bel and Frank, I concluded that baby toys were a marketing rip-off, because neither really cared much for the toys (except the farm magnet toy for the fridge - that was and still is fun). Walter, though, loves his toys. He is happy to sit and rummage through his basket. He'll play with nearly every toy in there. What surprises me is that he actually plays with them the way they were designed to be played with. Here's an example. He has some blocks that have spinny and pokey toys on the sides. Our other kids would chew on them if they bothered with them at all. Walt, however, will actually spin the spinny things and poke the pokey things. I am so amazed by this. I'm not sure why.

Finally, we have to report that Walt is no longer The Toothless Wonder. He got his first tooth on his ten month birthday. You can't really see it yet, but it's there. He's now The One Tooth Wonder.