Teddy's big day

The boy is one year old today. And he's managed to hit a few milestones of note over the last week on his way to his first birthday. Most of these milestones were reached over our long weekend in Chicago...

Where the Cubs, once again, let us down in dramatic - or, should I say, pathetic - fashion. While I wouldn't have said it at the start of the playoffs, this Cubs team was honestly the best Cubs team I've ever seen. They had the complete combination of good starting pitching, relief pitching and hitting that it takes to win a World Series. Again, I never voiced this opinion before the start of the playoffs for fear of inducing negative karma, but goddamit, this was a good team! How could they just roll over against the Dodgers? Watching them boot the ball all over the infield in the third inning of game two, which I was so fortunate to attend, was indescribably painful. And the atmosphere at the ballpark as the events of that inning unfolded was unbelievably depressing.

Now that I've gotten that out of my system, what did Teddy manage to accomplish over the weekend? First, he's started to "talk." Not in any meaningful way, although he does appear to be able to say "Mama" - he can repeat it along with Margaret and me (we had a group chant going on as we waited for her to get home tonight) and he seems able to actually identify who his Mama is. But he's also started to vocalize in interesting ways with modulations of tone associated with questions and emphatic statements. All nonsensical, but he's getting the idea. And he really started doing this vocalizing over the weekend with the grandparents.

He's also walking. Over the last few weeks, he's gotten better at taking a few steps, but he managed to put it all together this past weekend. When I last saw him on Thursday, he was walking a few steps before taking a seat. By the time I saw him on Sunday, he was stringing together dozens of steps before eventually losing his balance. When I first saw him again at our friends' house on Sunday, I watched with bemused amazement as he went step -- step, step -- step -- step, step, step -- step and so on, before he finally collapsed. I don't think that I had ever seen him take more than two steps in succession, and all of a sudden, he's trundling around the room.

I'm not sure what magic occurred at the grandparents' house, but I do know that both of the kids slept in until around 8:00 on Saturday and Sunday morning. That's 8:00 CST!!!! What the hell! We can't get the boy to sleep past 5:00 EST. And then today when Abby was admonishing Margaret for some sort of misbehavior, she whined, "I wish I was at Grandma Mary's house."

Hmmpphhh.

We have other news associated with Teddy's (possibly premature) graduation to the toddler room at daycare. But I'll save that for another time. Instead, I'll close this post with a variety of pictures, including some from his birthday party at school and at home.



And some videos of the boy (with the girl always in the background - something that is likely to become a common theme in Teddy's life.)