he cruises

Samuel is 9 months old. And all the kid wants to do is move.

Samuel was 7 months old when he started to army crawl which quickly led to the modified scoot that he's still doing. But at about 8 months he started pulling himself up on the furniture and cruising around the room. He also raises himself up to his knees and peers around like a prairie dog. Very good balance.

Samuel reminds me of Noah. Noah also wanted to move very badly, except Noah never learned to crawl. He just skipped it and went straight to walking at 9-10 months. We used to have to follow him around and pick him up wherever he fell b/c he couldn't get up. I think it was my fault with the burrito wrapping. At any rate, he's fine now.

This is what Noah looked like at about Samuel's same age. Noah saw this photo and thought it was Samuel.

Evie was a better mover than Noah but she needed a little encouragement to crawl. But at least she did things in the proper order. Here she is at about Samuel's same age.

Fast forward three years and now Samuel is the one digging in the bottom kitchen drawer for toys. And Evie is huge.

Samuel is peering in to the oven...or perhaps he was just pulling himself up.

He was standing here with the space heater a couple weeks ago when Snap came to stand next to him. I could just see on his face his thought process of how he could grab Snap. And he did, but then Snap moved. I thought it was cute. And I was right there to catch him b/c he's not good enough to stand on his own yet. But it won't be long now.

On Halloween I took a ton of photos of the kids and documented how mobile Samuel is. He crawled from the clothes line to the edge of the patio and stood up (20-30 feet).

Then he made his way over to the steps. See his scooting move? It's just like a crawl except he doesn't stay on all fours - he pulls his right leg forward at the time he should bring his knees up. That way he can stay on his bottom since he likes to be up.

Then he pulled himself up the sidewalk.

Samuel standing up at the step.

Now he's crawling up the step. He's done that a couple times inside too. We have to watch him since we have 3 sets of stairs and 4 levels.

Pulling himself up.

And he's standing!

Of course, he does get into to tricky places sometimes. I had to grab the camera before rescuing him from the basket though.

Samuel wanted to be a part of making cupcakes this afternoon.