323 days later

Sawyer most favoritest thing to do in the world right now is to empty his sock bin. Or his drawers. Or my drawers. He flings the clothes behind him, then sits down and flings them some more, spinning around when all the clothes are behind him to start the process over. I was not quite sure of the point of this exercise so I went into my own closet and started flinging clothes over my shoulder and discovered that it really is fun, and quite a realease.

Chapter 11 of my Baby Instruction Manual recommends teaching babies of this age basic concepts like hot and cold, up and down, in and out. So, the last few times Sawyer started emptying his drawers I sat down next to him and began returning all the clothes to the drawer saying, "In. Let's put the clothes IN the drawer, Sawyer," while he furiously grabbed them and flung them over his shoulder again, put-OUT that I was undoing his hard work. See how that works. In. Out. I think he gets it.

He's speaking in nearly complete sentences now, although I couldn't tell you what he' saying. But I recognize that he has a certain vocabulary of words - none that I will attempt to spell - which he repeats often. He understands, unquestionably, much of what we say. This afternoon in the car he was holding his palms flat together and since I can watch him in the baby mirror and he was half way there already, I said "clap." And for the first time, ever, he did. And he kept doing it while I bounced up and down behind the wheel shouting "clap" over and over. "Clap. Yeah! Good Boy. Clap!" I am never as ridiculously unencumbered as I am in the car. This heralds back to my high school driving days when - instead of focusing on the road - I would belt out off-key misharmonized Indigo Girls songs. (erm, i don't do that anymore.) Later in the day watching a Baby Einstein video with the "happy and you know it" song Sawyer clapped at all the appropriate times, and I gushed with motherly pride.

I don't care what anybody says about the clinkiness of Baby Einstein or that babies watching tv will give them ADD, which is probably true - I love these videos. I credit the 'babies first moves' video with teaching him to crawl, stand up, wave, and now clap. Since we are such country bumpkins, we don't have gym or yoga classes to attend so this is as close as it gets to having friends for us.

New fears have started creeping up. He is absolutely petrified of the vacuum cleaner. In fact, cruel as it may be, his reaction makes me laugh so hard that I kind of enjoy turning on the vacuum just to watch him bolt out of sitting position and, without turning around, crawl impossibly fast to the furthest possible point in the room. Then he spins around, deer-in-headlights-style, and warily watches the vacuum, his face teetering on the brink of terror.

And just today I gave him some stainless steel bowls to play with thinking that the resonate clanging sound they made when a plastic ring is dropped into them would fascinate Sawyer. But as soon as I left him alone on the floor with the bowls he melted into a puddle of tears and came crawling to me giving the bowls a good, wide berth.

But, the biggest news is that he has started standing on his own and just the other day he took his first two steps toward Scott. I got him to repeat the action the next day by holding out a shiny silver calculator. (recall that I encouraged Sawyer to crawl using my cell phone. its the digital age, people).

We FINALLY booked a ticket for Justin and he will be out here from June 19 to August 8. We are desperately trying to get the upstairs ready for him. When we moved we put all the boxes up there and the place has been the catch all for everything miscellaneous. There's camp and about 100 other things to figure out before he gets here, but I know his little brother will be thrilled to have a playmate.