Hooray for Amos! Yesterday, he took his first step. It was kind of a step, really- not the kind you normally think of, the stereotypical first step as the child lets go of his parents hands or some such. Instead, he was walking along the couch, steadying himself with one hand like he has been doing for a while. By a while, I mean like a month or two. He has been enjoying himself walking along things or walking while holding on to at least one steadying hand or walking while holding on to his train toy that he can push in front of him. He's also been standing without any support for a while, and yesterday the seconds jumped from him holding his balance for a second or two to holding his balance for several seconds with nothing to steadying him. Then yesterday, as he was walking along the couch sidestepping, he took one step without holding on to the couch! Yay!

Amos finally has his first tooth! I say finally because he's been teething for a long time. Tuesday, I think it was, he was biting on my finger, and I felt a nub of a tooth, and then today it was sharp! Pretty soon, I bet, he'll have not one but two lower incisors, as the tooth beside it seems to be getting close to erupting, too.

Our little Famous Amos is a little over 4 months old now! He had his last checkup just last Wednesday, along with his second set of vaccines. He is 26 lbs 11 ounces, and 24 inches long now! Amos can roll over when he really really wants to from his stomach to his back, and he usually can get onto his side from his back when he wants a toy. He loves to play, and some of his favorite toys are his huge stuffed bear (which he drags around the playpen with him and stuffs ears and legs and arms into his mouth) and the Little Einstein blocks, which he likes to turn around in his hands and stuff corners into his mouth. He's working on crawling, and has the motions figured out. He just has to get up off the ground and start moving, rather than trying to swim through the carpet! His sitting on his own record is about 5 minutes, but usually averages about a minute or so, depending on various factors (how excited or tired he is, how close the dogs are, etc.)

Little Amos is two months old today, and wow is he growing fast! He is packing on the pounds and gulping down the milk. He's been eating about 5 or 6 ounces 6 or 7 times a day. He's over 12 pounds now, and just about to start wearing the number 2 diapers. For the last week or two, he has pretty much only been wearing 3 to 6 month clothes, as the 0 to 3 month ones don't fit anymore (nor do the newborn clothes). He fills them out pretty well now.

Today, Amos is 4 weeks old. I figured it was high time for an update. :D

Yep, his umbilical cord stump fell off today, finally. Hooray!

On Saturday, December 6th, 2008, Amos Nicholas Albert Heber was born after 28 or so hours of labor. He was 20 inches long and weighed 7 lbs, 9 ounces. Since then, our lives have refocused naturally on him. He sure can keep us busy! All in all, Amos has been a great baby so far. We've had a little trouble with eating, but mostly he seems to be very content. If we let him, he would most likely sleep through the night already. His first week, he ate like a pig, regaining all the weight he'd lost (only 6 ounces) in the hospital in no time. In the past couple days he's been a bit fussier about eating, but we're working that out.

So many of you know that I am pregnant with my first child. We're 20 weeks along now. Those of you who do not wish to know whether the baby is going to be a boy or a girl may as well look at the ultrasounds and not read any of the rest of this post, just being assured that everything looks to be developing normally. You may also wish to cut off contact with the rest of our friends and family, many of whom know. :)

First, we go in chronological order. I had a wonderful experience last Monday- for those of you who don't know, I'm training my dog Boo to find lost pets. She is far from ready to be certified and go out on actual searches, but I do demos with her and that sort of thing, keeping the level of difficulty to what she can handle. She's training to do two separate tasks: (1) focus on the scent of one individual animal and ignore all others, tracing the path that animal took until she catches up with it, and (2) alert me when she catches the scent of any particular species I'm looking for and show me where the nearest one is (in this case, cats). On Monday, here's an account of what happened.

Haha! It's been less than a month since I last posted- bet I'm surprising you all! :D