Scattered Thoughts

I realized today what a real little person Patrick is becoming. He's trying desperately hard to talk to us. During dinner, he looked straight at me and chattered away. The look in his eyes combined with the earnest tone in his voice told me he was really attempting to communicate some point, but couldn't find the right grown-up words to do so.
Now that he's crawling--mostly--he's beginning to show more independence and assertiveness about where he goes and what he plays with. He'll still glance over his shoulder as he explores new areas of the house to make sure I'm following, but he's getting more brave about going new places on his own.

His favorite place to crawl is our play area. Right now it has very few toys in there, mostly the bigger toys that he hasn't shown any interest in so far. He discovered that he loves one of those toys, though. The sports toy (pictures to follow tomorrow) has completely captured his attention. He can't wait to get there and then can play with it for much longer than most of his toys. I'm tempted to move it into the living room where he spends more of his time, but I think half the fun of the toy is crawling to it.

I think I briefly mentioned yesterday that it looked like Patrick had figured out how to move from a crawling position to a sitting one. Several times yesterday and today I glanced over at his pen where he'd been playing on his belly a few minutes earlier, only to find him sitting up, happy as can be. I have yet to see it happen, but I'm proud of his new accomplishment.

He took it one step further when I went into his room to get him up from a nap earlier. I found him sitting up in the very middle of his crib, just waiting on me--the first time that's happened. He looked as proud of himself as I was of him. At this rate, he'll be walking before I know it.
I'm a day behind on pictures. All of today's were taken yesterday afternoon. It was unseasonably warm (he was wearing shorts even), so I decided to take advantage of the nice weather, probably our last warm day until spring. Patrick had a blast playing in the grass, as I'm sure you can tell. I'm glad we went outside yesterday because last night a cold front came through, and today was breezy and cold. While I typically enjoy the change in seasons, I'm not as excited about it this year. Cold weather means winter and RSV season. I'll already be worried that Patrick is dressed warmly enough, and now I get to worry about him getting sick, too. I guess the good part about winter, though, is that I'll get to watch him truly enjoy Christmas this year. Can you believe how close it is to holiday season already? Crazy!