It’s official.  As of yesterday night, Imanuel Alexander has learned to crawl!  Today would put him at 7 months and 20  days.  He sorta got the hang of it yesterday, but today, we could really consider him mobile.  Since the last post on him, he’d get up on all fours quite a bit, but when he wanted to move, he would always end up on his tummy and be squirming around.  The next step was when he discovered the fun of rocking back and forth on all fours.  Then, it was like he would rock back and forth and then lunge onto his stomach to try to reach his destination.   He quickly learned that if his back was against something sturdy like my leg or the couch, he could lunge/scoot even farther.  And all of a sudden, yesterday evening, something just clicked.  He came to the realization that if he moved his arms while lunging off his knees (or foot…you’ll see from the pictures) that he could get to where he wanted to go.  This usually happens to be towards any electronic device (laptop, phone, cords).  I think he gets that from his cousin, Juan.    You can imagine how our prayers are going to modify.

As for updates from the past month: 
1.  Imanuel started eating SOLID finger food – Cheerios.  He still hasn’t gotten the hang of letting go of the cereal when he brings his hand to his mouth. 
2.  We FINALLY bought a “high chair”…we actually just bought a booster seat.  I would usually just feed him while he was sitting on my lap.  Let’s just say that the investment has been WELL worth it. 
3.   IA has grown a new tooth!  Upper right central incisor.  His upper left one is about to cut through…
4.  Speaking of growing, we’ve graduated him to size 4 diapers.  It’s for weights 26-36lbs.  Imanuel is 22lbs but I think his belly and legs are a little on the chunky side.  
5.  We are slowly weaning him away from the bottle and to the cup and/or sippy cup.  He really enjoys the novelty of it.  They say it’s better to do this now rather than when their older and become attached.

Here are some pictures of him crawling and some other ones from this past month.  (I also added some pics from our CA trip to the previous post.)

What Imanuel looks like when he wakes up from a nap.

“Look, I’m doing the splits!”  HAHAHA!  He wasn’t smiling for long.  He put himself in this position and couldn’t get himself out of it!

Right when I took the picture, Bentley got on his hind legs and licked up a Cheerio.  He would do something like that.

Bentley sporting his sweater.  He was shivering uncontrollably so I put it on him.  Can you see the distress in his eyes?  (He hates his sweater.)

The baby is very irritated because he was napping a little too long (pushing 4 hours!) and so I had to go in there to wake him up.  He didn’t appreciate that and started flailing his legs around.  He kept his eyes closed and thumb in mouth the whole time.

We thought this picture was hilarious.  He gives this half-look-of-exhilaration and half-I’m-about-to-bust-out-laughing face quite often.  He’s quite a character.

It is such a JOY to watch our son grow and change!  It’s often so sad, though, because we can never go back in time.  The baby’s earlier stages are over and we just have to trust that what’s ahead will be better than what we’ve already experienced.  In the same way, I feel that as Christians, we need to press on, and continue to grow and develop!  And when we look back, I hope we find ourselves happier now than we have ever been in the past.