Standing!

Oliver stood up on his own for about ten seconds on Tuesday. He was playing by the couch and picked up a toy with both hands. He was so absorbed looking at it that he must have forgotten he couldn't stand yet. Ten seconds up, then.....plop on the diaper bottom. We'll miss the crab crawl. We'll also miss the butt swivel, when he sits on the floor and spins around with his legs like a gunners turret, surveying the 360 degree landscape.

At this point--almost one year old already!--we are starting to discern some of Oliver's passions. Food and music are the two frontrunners. He grunts and lunges whenever we eat apples, bananas, or drink water. Gimme some! Cora got a bucket of instruments for Christmas, mostly percussive ones like a hand drum, triangle, wooden strikers, clacker thingies, a penny whistle, a tambourine, and some other stuff to create racket with. On three separate occasions now Oliver has crawled over to the music box, dumped everything out in a pile, picked out the appropriate instruments and begun to play them. The first time he chose the drum and the matching drumstick. Then the triangle and the matching striker. Then the wood strikers. He gets completely absorbed.

Then when we were at G'ma and G'dad's and they were playing music at New Years he couldn't get enough of the music they were playing. He listened contentedly for a while and then crawled up to the instruments, intent on playing them himself. His technique is quite good already; he fans his fingers in a gentle strumming motion. There is obviously a strong genetic pull toward music in his blood, but it's amazing to see him approach instruments as if he's played them before. (Insert parental comments here--He's a genius!)