Soren Update: 14 Months

Soren is cruising around on two feet and I'm amazed at how quickly he's gotten steadier and fast.  Crawling is still his primary mode of transportation, but in the last few days he finally learned to get from a crawling position to a standing position without pulling himself up on anything, so he often stops crawling and pops up on two legs and continues on. 

He's said his first word - bye.  Well, his first word beyond "mama" or "dada," and he pronounces it "buh," but when he crawls to the window to watch the nanny leave and waves "Buh!" we know he knows what he's saying. He's still pointing at everything, and even though we don't know if he's pointing for the sake of pointing or because he's interested in something, we'll happily repeat word after word for him in hopes he'll start picking up more words.

As Soren learned to crawl, then to walk, and as he got bigger, he's become more aggressive. And bold with Oliver.  I'm sure this is frustrating for Oliver, as we've drilled it into him to be gentle with his brother, but for his part, he is playing a lot more nicely with Soren lately.  They still require a lot of supervision, mediation and constant reminders to play gently with each other, but despite this, it warms my heart when I witness them playing happily together.

Soren is our mostly fearless child, but he has things he's absolutely terrified of.  The growing list includes Santa Claus, bubble wrap and dogs.  There happened to be a Santa at the place we picked out our Christmas tree and I thought it'd be fun to have the kids pose with him, but Oliver wouldn't come closer than 10 feet even though he was otherwise interested in chatting with Santa.  Soren was fine looking at Santa from the security of my arms, but when I tried to hand him over for the photo-op, he screamed and shook with a terror I'd never experienced with him before.