The Seversons

There have been two things we’ve been trying to get on camera for weeks now.  One is Graham’s first tooth–and number two is close on its heels.  The other is his new talent of sitting unsupported.  The problem is getting a shot that doesn’t go wrong.

When it comes to the tooth, you’d think it’d be easy.  He does smile a decent amount and we see that tooth many times a day so it shouldn’t be so hard to capture on film.  But it’s like he knows what we’re doing and tries his best to thwart our efforts.  Observe:

Sometimes I think I got the tooth, but when I zoom in it turns out just to be the gleam of baby saliva.

As far as sitting goes, we’ve had several unsuccessful attempts, which almost all look like this:

That is one of the longer ones.

But Grammer seems to have turned a corner.  As of yesterday he now seems to be an utter master of sitting.  He still takes a tumble every now and then, but I practically made an entire sandwich this afternoon while he sat there dropping and then picking up his rattle.

I realize that to someone who doesn’t spend all day with Graham this may seem like small potatoes.  I get that.  But he is just so pleased with himself.  Except that he is already trying to move on to bigger and better things.  He may not know what crawling is, but he desperately wants to do it.  He now moves by a combination of sitting and rolling to get wherever he wants to go.  He also has developed a new hobby: leaning back.

He enjoys the looking back over the shoulder pose, perhaps next we will work on broken-down-doll.

As for our adventures in sitting, I am debating an important question: how often do you let your kid face plant?  I keep him from falling over if it looks like he’s going to hit something or hurt himself, not that that’s stopped him from getting a couple of bonks on the head.  Still, I know he has to fall if he’s going to learn how to balance himself.  He doesn’t seem to mind falling backwards so much, but falling forwards tends to require a good minute of cuddling before he can venture back out.  It is our first real test of baby independence vs. parental protection, but it appears it’s working because that baby can sure sit.