Standing Tall and Proud!

There's been no progress on crawling, but Chad is getting better and better at standing.  I hear some babies never crawl, so maybe he's going to fall into that category.  And because he still does his swimming thing to drag himself across the floor so well, crawling would just slow him down. (He likes to balance on his toes and hands, and stick his booty up in the air, but can't make any forward progress that way.)  Lately, he's been pulling himself up using whatever he can find.  He can get himself into a kneeling position, and with a little help can get all the way up and hold onto something.  Here are some pictures of him playing before bed last night.

Kneeling up to play with his musical table.  He is obsessed with the little book on top.  He loves turning pages.

Standing all by himself with his walker!

One-handed!

Playing with Andy and Fenway.  This picture would have been so much cuter if they hadn't chosen to play right in front of Chad's bathroom.

We're also really excited that Chad has been pacifier-free for over a month now!  I hate seeing toddlers walking around with pacifiers in their mouths, and if he never had a pacifier that would have been fine with me.  To my dismay, he liked them when he was little, and I was panicking that he would be addicted and still using a pacifier when he's 4 years old.  We started weaning him off of it a few months ago by only giving it to him at bedtime and for naps, and then we moved to using it for naps only.  And then only if he woke up hysterical in the middle of the night and we needed him to calm down so everyone could get some more sleep.  But... he hasn't had it in over a month now!  (Actually, that's a lie.  We left it on the side of the crib and Fenway knocked it in once and Chad found it and played with it, but that's it.)
Right now he's napping, and then this afternoon we're taking him to the science museum to see the animals.  Gotta start geekify-ing the little guy early!