Baby steps

On Friday, Miles took two steps on his own. Since then we've practiced several times -- Miles starting out from the ottoman and walking to the couch to retrieve a toy. I'm not sure that he's aware yet that he's walking. He seems to judge the distance, weigh the value of the toy that is put out as a lure, and decide whether he'd rather drop to the ground and crawl to it, or not bother at all and head in the other direction around the ottoman to the ipod computer speakers on the end table. When he decides to walk, he goes two steps and then falls forward and catches himself on the couch, landing with his hands and open mouth on top of the toy, giving it a good slobbery kiss.

I thought perhaps the ottoman was too close; if it were just a bit further, he'd have to take three steps. So we inched it away from the couch, and tried again. Now instead of taking two steps and falling on the couch, he lunges as though he's putting the ball over the goal line.

Another change this week -- we're going off formula, 3 weeks short of 12 months which is the recommended age to switch to whole cow's milk. No real reason to speed this up except that we were running low on the can of powdered formula (I prefer Horizon's organic version - the least metallic-smelling and tasting one that I tried, and surprisingly not any more expensive than non-organic brands) and so we thought we'd give milk a try before buying another can. Since you're also supposed to wean babies off bottles about now, we tried giving it to him in a sippy cup, which he didn't like enough to drink more than an ounce or two. After that we poured the rest into a bottle, but he still pushed it away. I was ready to give up on it but today his nanny said he drank two large bottles for her. She warmed up the milk first, which is I guess the key. When I confessed that we hadn't heated up the milk she kind of looked at me like what did you expect?