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Today Art was in the living room with Jessica and I when he took three tiny steps. After that he got really excited and would shoot up and down standing in place or fall into our arms over and over again. But he did take his first steps! It's a big day in the world of Arthur and his proud parents.

  

This is Art with his new friend, Riley (almost 2). Riley comes over every Thursday to hang out with his his Momma, Marcy, while she takes care of Art. Well, she takes care of both of them. Looks like they're having fun to me!       

Art has been standing up on his own for a few weeks now. And boy is he tired!!! But seriously, he can stand unassisted AND play with a toy without tipping over! We're going to Mexico the first week of November and we kept thinking he would be walking by then. At this rate it could go either way. He seemed to try and take a step the other day, but it was so small it really could have been our imagination. Mostly, if he's standing and we try to encourage him to come to us he just gets down and crawls. Any bets on whether he will cross the border on two feet?

I'm trying out YouTube on the blog. Kinda clunky, but loads lots faster. This is a four minute video of art fetching, clapping, destroying, and making wonderful sucking noises. You can watch this video below on the blog, or go directly to YouTube by clicking this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_lSNV72JBw [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_lSNV72JBw&w=425&h=350]

Art was sitting on my lap this morning looking around and drooling on himself and I said, "Clap hands!". And he did. It was the surest I've been that he understands language. Then I said, "Where's Carma?" (our cat). And then he pointed to her! In-fricken-credible. It made him so happy, too.

I tell ya', it's super fun watching Art figure things out. He can stand on his own now and it looks like a magic trick. Where are wires? And just today he put the ball in the top of the toy and after I showed him how he hammered it through. He used the hammer! And he would take the ball out of the bottom of the toy, where it spits out, and put it back on top and hammered it through AGAIN! It's like a development EXPLOSION around here!!!

Art has his first ear infection! So he's on the Pink Stuff. Poor guy, he was at the cottage (pictures to come!) with an ear infection all weekend. Poorer guy, I had to inject all kinds of medicine into him tonight - ear drops in his left ear, pink bubble gum antibiotic squirted into his mouth to be followed by a squirt of MORE medicine, grape flavored children's tylenol. Blah. Sleep well, little one!

Today Art clapped for the first time! And then he seemed to want to exercise his new skill because he clapped a lot this evening - crawl, clap, sit up, clap, crawl, clap some more... And he's gotten into dropping things off his high chair these last few days. Drop, watch it land and/or roll, watch mommy pick it up. Drop it again... Another thing we've noticed just in the last day or so is him standing AND doing something, like eating a pear (!) or picking up a basket (!!!). Tonight he got himself up to standing while holding both handles of his basket of blocks. Pretty cool. He's also just started to find it fun to knock down a tower of blocks. This is all in the last few days, as if there's just some sort of development explosion!