Updates

Lately Elliot has been showing me his O face.  

(If you just went “ewwww” then I'm guessing you were born between 1970 and 1995.)

He purses his lips into a tight O and raises his eyebrows.  It's freaking adorable.  We have no idea where he learned it, but he’s been doing it all the time.

The expression seems to express surprise, shock, wonderment.  But I’m not sure he’s using it that way.  He usually makes the O face when I scold him, tell him no.  A few months ago, when I scolded him, he would respond with this ugly half-smile, like he was trying to be cute and failing.  

For the past few months we've been letting him stand in front of the open refrigerator door.  Naturally he wants to grab stuff.  But we’ve been telling him No, and amazingly it works.  Now he just stands there and looks.  Sometimes he pokes out a little mealworm finger and touches the tupperwares and cartons of eggs.  Sometimes you can see a rising urge to grab: he unfurls all five fingers and moves his hand forward a few inches.  Then he stops and looks to see if we're watching.  Which we are.  And we congratulate him for his restraint.

He took his first steps on (I think) November 18.  The number of steps was two, and the stride length was between one and two inches.  Still, we're counting it.  He hasn’t exactly exploded into walking, he still prefers crawling.  BUt he’s getting there. 

We are cat sitting for our friend Irina this week.  At first, Elliot had a little trouble restraining his desire to poke the cat in the eye.  But with a little encouragement (I say the word “gentle” more than any other now when I’m around Elliot) he’s no longer doing that.  Now he just slaps at her back.  Which is closer to petting than poking the eyes was.  So we’re counting that a success.  

To Ding Dong’s credit (did I mention the cat’s name is Ding Dong?) she has not given Elliot the cold shoulder.  In fact, this morning she walked past him and rubbed against him while he was sitting drinking a bottle.

The problem is that cats have only one setting when it comes to rubbing against you.  They rub against a 200lb adult with the same force as a 26lb infant.  So Elliot has almost been knocked over a few times.  Which he finds irritating, as anyone would.