Gruulcrash pre-release

While I've not played too much Magic: The Gathering recently, I like to go to the pre-release events if I can (even if I prefer drafting), so was pleased to be able to go to the Gatecrash one in St Albans. I heard about it early and checked I was free that day (i.e. Liz wasn't working so she would be able to look after Kaleb) so pre-registered. I can't remember how much I had read about Gatecrash at the time, but knew the guilds roughly at least, so decided to pick Gruul as my first choice of guild. 

The main reason being that I like the colour combination, and that I hoped that it wouldn't be too hard to play (with a general plan of play creatures and attack), me not playing as much and all. 

Self contained toys

Kaleb had stated to do commando style crawling to get around, and today looked like he was trying to lift his body up too. To help him practice, I got out two of his toys that move on their own.

One is a little eyore toy that slowly walks along a bit and then stops waiting for the child to follow it, moving again when the child touches it. The other toy was one my dad got him for Christmas - a little alien that moves in random directions until it hits something where it will change direction, eventually stopping somewhere, waiting to have its head bopped before it goes off again.

We had these two toys out, the eyore had moved along the floor but Kaleb wasn't following so it waited where it was. Meanwhile, the alien was zipping around the floor and eventually hit into the waiting eyore, which stated it off again - one toy had interacted with the other toy causing it to carry on moving.

Kaleb's second Snow

We had a little bit of snow recently, which was Kaleb's first ever experience with it. The recent snow now is the second time he has seen it, and it has certainly stuck around.

When it first started snowing and settling, we took him outside so he could experience it first hand. We wrapped him up in multiple layers and took him into our driveway where we sat him in the snow for a little bit.

He sat around smiling at us (although he does that a lot) but didn't interact with the snow that much. Probably due to all the layers as that might have restricted how much he could move, but I suspect he had noticed it was a little chilly too.

Apart from the one snow play outside, he has mostly been experiencing snow while in his buggy, I'm not sure if he's noticed that the ride isn't as smooth as usual, or just that it's particularly cold outside recently.

7 months of growth

Kaleb turns 8 months at the end of January. I'm sitting here wondering where the time had gone already...

My last Kaleb related post was back when he was 3 months old, and a lot has changed since then. He soon learned to roll over and hold things in his hands. Rolling over meant that he was no longer going to always stay where you put him, and it was exciting to see him being able to pick something up to interact with it.

At 6 months we started weaning him - waiting till then meant we didn't have to mess around with mushing things up quite so much and could give him solid food straight away. We did have him practicing dinner time beforehand by letting him play with a plastic spoon while we were eating, but he seems happier to just grab food with him hands directly. We've attempted to spoon feed him a few times, but he mostly prefers feeding himself.

We found out early on that he seems to like bread sticks. I think he was starting to teethe and having something he could crunch a little bit with his gums might have helped him. They're also a good shape for him to be able to hold onto. We've tried out a range of different things for him, even cooking a couple of meals that we know he can eat so he can be eating the same as us, usually changing one or two minor bits to make it more Kaleb friendly.

Speaking of teething, I discovered on Xmas eve that two little bottom teeth had poked out (he bit me...), which has changed his eating minorly; if we give him a grape he can now split it open before spitting it out, and he crunches up some food a little faster now.

Most recently he has been able to sit up on his own, which I see as a pretty big step. I found this out while he was having a bath and though it took a couple of wobbly days he can now usually sit up unaided and not always topple over if he reaches to grab something nearby.

Sitting on his own has shown that he is starting to practice to shuffle around on his bum, giving him more ways to get around. This way is a lot slower than his previous method of rolling over to cover a distance, and rotating on the spot to aim himself, but I think he likes sitting up for the time being.

He's not been crawling properly yet, mainly just rolling around, but I have seen him move along on his stomach like a little army commando crawl, so he might just sick with those. I guess only time will tell...

We have been playing peekaboo by hiding his face with a thin cloth - he finds it hilarious when it gets pulled away. So much so that he taught himself to grab it and pull it down himself.

It's crazy to think that he'll be a year old in a couple of months, I can't wait to find out what he will be able to do then!

2012 (plus top 3 events)

Looking back on the previous year blog post, I can certainly say that 2012 was very different. Instead of having no plans, we had a couple of major things in mind and for the most part managed to keep to them. It certainly was an exciting year.