mason eats...

...and eats, and eats. madelyn ate a lot, but mason eats more than an adult. matt and i often sit and watch in amazement as mason out eats all of us at every meal. thankfully, he isn't picky and eats just about anything put in front of him. we usually feed him bits and pieces without really paying attention to total amount.

last week we went to a potluck with our bible study and mason ate two hot dogs, one hamburger, two or three handfuls of fresh fruit, a handful of cooked vegetables, string cheese, some raw vegetables, and at least 8oz. of water. and this was all consumed in about a half hour period of time.

he has also started to eat two waffles, a banana, and some dry cereal for breakfast. i almost need to go to the grocery store twice a week now!

he has finally started making attempts at signing. his sign for "more" is close to clapping but not as vertical. and then he signs for "water" like madelyn used to with an open hand to the mouth. sitting in the high chair is also one of his favorite times to give high fives and clap his hands - once he is done eating that is...

mason is getting pretty close to free standing too. he can do it and i have seem him do it on several occasions but he doesn't want to do it. if i hold him out and say, "1, 2, 3, ta-da", before i let go he just slowly lowers himself to sitting. he doesn't fall down, it is very controlled. i think that he is just afraid to fall so it doesn't want to stand up on his own.

and since he is afraid to fall and hurt himself we have been fairly accident free with mason. he just has a natural reflex to turn his face away from hard surfaces when he falls. that is until he has become obsessed with reaching the tops of tables. he keeps hitting chairs on the way down! he has a nice deep bruise on his cheek from our dining room chair and then he got a new one on his forehead yesterday when we were at a playdate - again from a dining table chair. he was trying to keep up with the older kids. at least this time it doesn't seem like too bad of a bruise. there is just a line from the edge of the chair and it was much less visible this morning which made me feel even better.

he is getting really fast at getting up stairs even though he gets very little practice and makes no effort to climb up on anything else. the funny thing is that he doesn't 'climb' up the stairs, he 'walks up them' - his knees never touch the stairs.

and he is still sweet as ever, tall, and lean. love.