Standing manvation

This will be the first of two blog updates: one mainly about Levi and the other mostly about our recent trip to England!

Where Levi is concerned, he's working on being a standing man. He's been pulling himself up to a standing position for a couple of weeks now - apparently I was one of the last to witness it. He's never been one to want to practice walking, or seem to understand what we're trying to do by holding his hands and trying to make him move his little feet. But the past few days while he's been standing, we've been practicing letting go to see if he can stand on his own. and today, twice, success! For about a second but he's learning to balance!

He doesn't edge along anything by taking little steps while standing and holding onto something, but he'll get there soon I'm sure!

Tim has also declared that "dada" is Levi's official first word. Levi regularly has conversations, usually when he's excited about something, almost entirely consisting of "dada," "mama", "baba" and the like. Dada is the sound he uses most consistently, sometimes when Tim is around, but often when he's not. so. There's no official proof Levi equates it to Tim. Though mama is his least-used regular sound, and he seems to have no idea that it could be related to me.

We call Levi Bubba a lot, and he's seemed to make a sound sort of like that recently. He also says a phrase like "ayaya" which seems to mean "feed me more NOW." He uses that one a lot :)

As demonstrated by our recent vacation - he generally put down as much food as I did at a general meal. The time change threw him off, of course, but it was most likely that he wanted yet more food every couple of hours than needed a nap when he was fussy. Even without dairy, eggs or nuts (Tim's allergies) and peanuts, he gets an intense amount of food in his little tummy.

Speaking of tummies, though Levi has my skin and hair, he might have been born with Tim's digestive system. Not food allergies, we haven't discovered any yet, but his processing of something when his tummy might hurt. My system works to get rid of any problems quickly and painlessly. Tim's? Not so much. Levi, the last couple of days we were in the UK, went a couple of days without pooping, which he hasn't done since he started eating solids. and rather than a big explosive diaper, which we were expecting, he had a couple of normal, if small, poopie diapers. to lull us into thinking maybe he just hadn't eaten as much for a couple of days. not the case - crazy - change on the bathroom floor because no other surface can handle the mess, diaper right before our second day of sight seeing in London. and I said "you know, that's kind of weird - you wouldn't have thought he would have had a couple of normal diapers before this one - you'd think it would be the other way around." Tim just shook his head and said "not if he's got a system like mine." Only Levi is always so happy unless he's hungry or tired - his tummy probably hurt and we didn't even know.

Today I've spent most of the day holding the poor boy while he switches between dozing and crying - time change = not so fun. We had an eight hour flight yesterday which landed at 7:30 p.m. EST, and we got home around 11. But at that point, it was 4 a.m. GMT, where we were coming from. Levi only slept for a total of two hours the whole flight (which landed after midnight in the timezone we were coming from) and then slept for a couple of hours on our train and car ride back to our house. and then was up at 6:30. yes. so today was a catch-up day. Me on laundry, him on sleep :)