Friday Photo in Motion - Upward Movement

Finally, Brock has learned how to sit himself upright and pull up. I have been waiting on these milestones for a while now because his little cousin Anna started doing this stuff at like 6 months, so I assumed he would be on about the same track, but he couldn't quite get it until the 9.5 month mark. I think the little guy might just be weighted down a bit by his large head and belly. At any rate though, he's figured it out now and he's loving it!

The sitting up happened first in his crib and came a few days before the pulling up. Then he figured out how to sit up and pull up to standing, but he couldn't figure out how to get back down. Before all this, whenever I would lay him down, he would roll right over onto his side, grab his blankie, put his thumb in his mouth, and go right to sleep. Now, however, when I lay him down, he sits right up and watches me leave, then stands himself up and plays for a few minutes. There were a couple of days where he would start crying once he got himself stood up because he couldn't figure out how to lay back down, but I tried to let him practice while he was awake so he could get the hang of getting up and down (I used my cell phone as bait for getting him to sit back down once he was up), and just yesterday he finally figured it out.

I should note that while part of me is excited about and proud of all these skills and achievements because it's my son, I think there's actually a bigger part of me that is just fascinated in general at how babies learn and grow. I guess my fascination with human beings is part of the reason I majored in psychology, and I remember being particularly interested in my child psychology classes and all the things we learned about how the human mind and body develop. It's just crazy how they accumulate all these skills and how they start understanding things and collect all this knowledge in less than 12 months. Anyway, of course I had to document this new accomplishment with the video camera, so I laid him in bed one day this week and hit record to capture the magic.