It's been a wonderful holiday season for us all. We had two Christmases, one at my family and another at Nicole's. We were very grateful for all that our friends and families gave us this year, but one gift came from Carter that was particularly delightful:
He learned how to shake his head 'No'. This of course is a huge progression from our previous communication with him, which consisted of 'crying' and 'not crying'. Now we can ask him several simple questions, such as "do you want your bottle?" and "do you want some food?". These are met with vigorous head shakes if he doesn't want them. Additionally we can flash just about any object in front of him (including Mom and Dad) and he'll shake his head accordingly. We're still working on 'yes' nods so for now we'll just have to make do with him crying when he wants something.
When he's not shaking off my signs, Carter has been doing the monkey walk all around our ottoman, couch and various stand up toys. It seems that he is still determined to skip the whole crawling thing and go right into walking. If Ryan is any indicator, we're probably a few months away from free standing and house roaming. Just to be safe, we'll need to start being more mindful of closing the baby gates from here on forward.
