It walks among us

So it's true, the Simon has now advanced into the bipedal realm. I was sitting at the dinner table the other night when all of a sudden, Ashley gasped and said "Simon is walking." She was looking right over my shoulder. The look on her face, the tone of her voice, she could have been telling me that there was a snake slithering up the wall. I turned around and there he was, toddling along, eyes front, legs wobbly, belly leading the way. And he's been keeping at it ever since.

Unrelated....you remember that episode of The Simpsons, there's that moment where Nelson the Bully points at his own reflection and does his signature "Ha Ha!", but then frowns and says "Hey, that hurts. No wonder nobody came to my birthday party." Of course you remember it. Simon had a similar moment recently. You see, the kid's a biter. He gets the biggest kick out of sinking his teeth into his mom and I. And it doesn't seem to be just when he's teething, it can happen when he's in the best of moods. My shoulders bear teeth marks that may never completely go away. So the biting is Simon's "Ha ha." I was cradling him in my arms as he was falling asleep. He was just about off to dreamland, but part of him was still clinging to the waking world. He took my finger in one of his little baby hands and pulled it towards his mouth, as if to take a chomp. I took my finger back, but in his half asleep state, the little guy didn't realize. He put his own fingers in his mouth and bit down. "Hey," he said. "that hurts." "Yeah," I said. "Hurts like hell. Lucky you're cute."

The Zombiewalk

It's not always easy to get the kid to perform, particularly if he sees a camera in my hand. He granted me about 1.5 seconds of his baby zombie walk, but his agent said his contract forbade going beyond that without some serious renegotiations. Ah well, that's what editing is for. Enjoy.

Bipedalism

So early last month, I posted about Henry taking his first steps, at which point The Ash and I just assumed it'd be no time at all before the little destructor was full-blown biped. I mean duh, right? But then, as Ash mentioned in a recent post on her blog (quick aside: yay, Ash is blogging!) the little guy didn't seem to want to progress past just those initial few steps, preferring instead to keep things nice and low to the ground. Perhaps to stay at eye level with the dog? Which was cool and all, but as more time passed, we started to wonder if we should be concerned. Was there something we were supposed to be doing? Some trick they forgot to teach us at the hospital? A section of the baby owner's manual that we glossed over? Or was in fact everything just fine, and we just needed to chill out?

Then not a week after her post, the little guy up and decides he's gonna give this walking thing another go. We caught it on video, and since I yam who I yam, I couldn't resist adding a soundtrack.