Updates and Milestones

As messy as our kitchen looks these days, Nate's playing is not without determination and purpose.  Nate has been playing with toy stacking cups for a while and has become quite good at stacking them.  Today, I noticed him stacking Tupperware containers into one another.  I watched him trying for a little while and he seemed so determined to get it done.  He was beaming with a huge smile afterward and shook the containers so much out of excitement that they came apart.  He didn't mind and just went right back to stacking them again.
 

Right after that, he went to his stacking rings and stacked those as well!  He's been trying for a little while but never seemed to be able to get it on his own.  But not today!  I just held the base for him so that it wouldn't tip over.  The rings were not stacked quite in the right order but he and I were both so excited and proud!

Also, Nate loves to put his toys back into the toy basket, or anything that resembles a basket - such as his exersaucer seat, although it's just when he feels like it and not necessarily when I want him to.  He also loves to put his toys onto higher surfaces, such as chairs, tables, or book shelves.  Not sure if this is organization skills or some sort of milestone but he enjoys doing this regularly these days.

He also loves the phone and has just started imitating talking on the phone.  I've been putting his toy phone to his ears for some time and he's always just grabbed it and put it to his mouth.  Then two days ago, I saw him grab his toy phone, put it to his ear and tilted his head slightly to the side.  Now, every time we say "hello," in English or Korean, he picks up his toy phone with a huge smile, tilts his head and puts it up against his ear.  It was amazing to me to realize that he seemed uninterested all those times I tried to teach him, but he's been learning all along.

Nate has become quite good at playing "hide and find" games where we hide things for him to find or  "which hand?" games using cheerios.  The problem now is that when we try to sign "more" during meal times, he thinks we are holding cheerios for him to find.  Oh well!  He is getting better at communicating with us though.  He points at things he wants, says "dada", ball", "book", and "duck" pretty clearly.  Now if we can only get him to say "mama"...

Lastly, Nate has been enjoying climbing the stairs and walking around the loop with a walker.  We have to follow him around and angle the walker so he doesn't slam into the wall, but he can go round and round and round and round.  He's also standing on his own for longer stretches now and we even saw him take a tiny little step today! Our little baby boy is growing up!