Up, Up and Away

Ever since he was born, everything about Lucas' personality has screamed "SLOW, STEADY and LAID BACK" (while everything about Ellie's personality screams "JACKRABBIT"). He has always been so easy going and relaxed about just about everything - and certainly mobility has been no exception. It was shocking to us that he actually even started crawling when he did because he has just never been all that interested in being on the move. Even now that he's been crawling around for two and a half months, he still likes to take his sweet time to get places (and he's still sticking with the one legged crawl). Don't get me wrong, the boy can motor when he wants to, it's just that he rarely wants to. He will crawl really quickly for 5 seconds and then stop, sit and look around, then back to business for a few more seconds before taking another break to survey the land (maybe something more interesting popped up in the last few seconds - let me take a look).

Luke's latest trick is that he has learned how to climb stairs. This is potentially terrifying, as we live in a row home that has approximately 50,000 stairs, therefore there is ample opportunity for him to take a nasty tumble. Being the Worrier that I am, I often have visions of him plummeting down our treacherous basement stairs and have become mildly obsessed with keeping the basement door closed at all times. But like with everything else, while Lucas likes climbing stairs, he likes to take his sweet time doing it. He can fly up tons of stairs quickly if he wants to but...you guessed it...he rarely wants to. I could, in theory, leave the room while he was on step number one and return 5 minutes later and he'd only be on step number 3, looking around and checkin' out everything there is to see from step number three before even considering what the view might look like from step four. That is our only saving grace at this point because the boy loves stairs.

He seems to be gaining more and more balance every day, making slow and steady progress toward being a walker. He can walk around holding onto only one finger, and he can now also walk around by himself using a push toy. He is so proud of himself that he is able to do both of these things, but he still doesn't have much confidence when it comes to standing on his own. While he can actually stand unassisted for a few seconds, he usually gets scared and sits down the second he realizes that he's not holding on to anything. He has actually even taken a few unassisted steps here and there, but it's only happened when he wasn't paying any attention and therefore wasn't being overly cautious. He is so my kid.

it's only a matter of time, though, before he really gets going.

Ellie, meanwhile, has been pretty active this summer herself. For her birthday, she received a big girl bike (with training wheels) from Gram and Grandpa to take the place of the tricycle she'd just mastered riding earlier in the year. The bike is a little different than what she was used to, and was a little scary for her at first because that thing can really go pretty fast, especially on the hill in front of our house (perhaps it was all the rust on the ancient trike that kept her from going very fast). It didn't take long, though, before she learned out to use the breaks (which the trike didn't have), steer around the fire hydrants and such, and motor up hills pretty quickly. Now she actually loves going fast and seems to love it even more that I literally have to run to keep up with her on her bike these days.

She has also spent the summer learning to how pump her legs and swing herself on the swings. She actually picked it up pretty quickly and can now not only swing (really high) all by herself, but she can even get started completely on her own!

And finally, Elise has been playing soccer on Sunday mornings all summer with a group of other 2-4 year olds. They don't play actual games - just fun little drills and things involving a soccer ball. Sometimes she seems like she absolutely loves it and other times, not so much. She is definitely still too young to be involved in something like this if we were paying for it (since she's so hot or cold about soccer on any given day) so this has actually been a nice way to introduce her to an "organized" sport. Marty randomly became the coach a few weeks ago and is actually loving his new role. I am not so sure Ellie likes sharing her Daddy with the rest of the team, but she is handling it well.