All Grown Up

I am not sure when it happened, but my baby is becoming a big boy. Allow me to explain.

To me the above picture is self-explanatory. What? You don't see it?! He doesn't look like a grown-up here? Jerry Seinfeld? (Nick says his white tennis shoes make him look like Jerry). Oh well, I digress.

This grown-up-ness kindof hit me this weekend on several occasions. First, when we went to the mall sans stroller and he walked around with my dad

Rode on the escalator, practically by himself

And sat in these big boy chairs at Gymboree

Then, when I was feeding him yogurt and instead of the usual push my hand away turn his head whine notification that he was finished, he simply said "Ahh duhh," which translates in adult English to "all done."  To which I replied "excuse me, did you just communicate a desire (somewhat) clearly and directly to me?" And then, because I'm a ridiculous emotional mom, I had the very normal response of tearing up. Let me defend myself... Okay, yeah, there's really no defense there. I'll just leave it at this, I was really proud of my boy.

We have slowly but surely been progressing on the communication front for a while now. He understands a lot of what we say, like come on, let's go outside, take a bath, eat, read a book or whatever. Also he says a lot of words to communicate back like up, bath, bye bye, night night, book, water, etc.