Baby Skills

Asher is definitely crawling rather than wriggling these days. He's getting quicker and quicker too! But even better than crawling is holding a friendly adult's hands and walking and walking and walking. He has a very cute way of holding up one hand to grab mine, pulling up, then standing absolutely still with his other hand up until I take hold of that one too. Then he's off! He can pull up on the furniture or his baby walker but he doesn't like to move around by clinging on to inanimate objects. Mummy's fingers are best!

His standing up skillset is developing too. He is now able to bend down from standing to pick something up from the floor. He usually manages to land on his bottom or all fours if he's standing up and wants to get down (although a bit of grown-up help is still appreciated). He still hasn't figured out how to get from lying down to sitting up, though. In fact I don't even know how babies manage that!

Other current skills include turning the pages and lifting the flaps when we read to him. He's starting to recognise his favourite pages too. In case you're wondering, these are the lion page in Dear Zoo, and the page in Hairy Maclary which was always my least favourite: Scarface Claw doing his big "Eeeeeeeowfftz" thing. Hmm, quite a cat theme there...

He can open drawers (so effectively that I have now removed the contents of the coffee table drawers and replaced them with things Asher is allowed to play with, like plastic boxes, bits of fabric and my star shaped silicone cupcake cases, which actually make fantastic baby toys).

And towers. Asher is fantastic at knocking down towers. Every now and then I give him a block or cup and encourage him to put it on top of the structure I'm working on. But he's not going to be fooled by that. Oh no. Towers are for knocking down, Mummy!

Oh, he can high five. When he feels like it. I have to hold my hand up and give a verbal cue, then he hits his little hand on mine. It's so cute! He was high fiving a stranger on the train the other day... I think that brightened up everyone's journey.

Letting go. He's really getting into letting go of stuff. That makes mealtimes interesting! But it helps him to play a bit more effectively. Sometimes we play "catch" - I throw his ball to him, he picks it up, gives it a chew, waves it around a bit and lets go. Quite often it flies in my direction. Excellent entertainment.

He's still a real social baby. Some of his happiest times are when we go to meet Noah at work for lunch. The whole team will sit and eat together, and Asher loves all the attention they give him. Most days he favours them with his trademark Asher smile. Here it is!