On and on and on...

Well, he did it. 4 months before his big brother could do it, he did it.

We're pulled up, folks...all the way to standing. Seeeee?!?! (Note: I hate our bricks for babies...I can just feel my teeth being knocked out when I see a baby crawling near them...however, Baby J reached inbetween two pillows to get to them and pull up for the first time, so we took advantage of the photo op while I stood by ready to catch if necessary). At 7 months, James has also cut 2 new teeth (he has 4 total), says "hi" while waving, says "mama," blows kisses (I wish I could figure out how to post the video of this...too cute!), is crawling everywhere on all fours (Henry didn't do this until after 8 months!), is becoming more social by the minute, is taking two naps a day - long in the a.m. short in the p.m., is a sweet little thumb-sucker, wears 18-24 month clothing, is verrrrry ticklish, loves his big brother, is into anything he can get his hands on, puts everything he can find into his mouth, and is still the sweetest most easy-going baby you've ever seen. Since we're talking milestones, Mr. Henry has hit a few of his own. In a bad mom moment like none other, I discovered that he cut ALL 4 of his big boy molars this past month...they were all through before I even knew it had happened. Poor baby. Everytime I see our full bottle of Children's Motrin I want to kick myself. He has gone from speaking in sentences to having full-out conversations...with anyone who will listen. (Jared, darling, he does not get this chattiness from me.) He is very into 'hiding' right now, and seeks out cubbies and nooks to stash himself in while nobody is looking. He is also all about pretending. He pretends to be all sorts of things and people, and he also loves to make his toys have conversations with each other and with him. Don't even get me started on how much he loves his Halloween costumes - yes, there are two. Also, about a month ago, we noticed that he was singing along with songs that he knows and speaking along with scenes from movies that he likes. That was so awesome to us, because literally one day, he couldn't sing along with anything...the next, he was singing every single word to every single song. That kind of thing is fascinating to me, because there are so few other stages in a human life where you can actually SEE cognitive processes developing, and we're bearing witness to it everyday. Wow.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention/admit that the H-man is having a time of it getting through his Terrible Twos. I don't really like that phrase, because I don't think anything about my baby is terrible...but, it's what the world calls this phase, so I'll begrudgingly use it. One of my girlfriends who reads here recently wrote a blog post about how her sweet daughter (who is almost three) never experienced this at all, and all I could think was...hmmm, how nice...where do I sign up for one of those? Because, alas, 'tis certainly not the case in the Chesser house! We're all about the red-faced, tantrumy, mine-mine-mine, no-mommy-no, don't-want-to, accidentally-yet-on-purpose hurting baby brother, etc. etc. around here. If you need a lesson in patience, I highly recommend taking on a 2-year old for the day. In fact, I'd be delighted to let you know when mine is having a particularly bad moment by throwing him out my car window and into your yard. Return him at your leisure. :)

A few Fridays ago, we took a field trip to see daddy at work. Henry was on Cloud 9 to get to see where daddy goes everyday, to make xerox copies of his hands, to be pushed around all over the place in a rolling office chair, and to lay the ChesserCharm down on Ms. Becky. And looky looky what I got a few days after that...a sweet picture of the two of them together where they're BOTH smiling. No, they're not both looking at the camera. No, they're not their best smiles ever. But, beggers can't be choosers, right?!? I'll take it!After finishing this post, I learned how to upload the kissy video!! Just turn off the music (at bottom of the blog) to hear the video. Enjoy!