he's a toddler, finally

Yep, that day has finally come. Spencer has been crawling since just before nine months, started taking a couple of well-balanced steps right after his birthday, and has even mastered walking the length of our entire hallway unassisted, but until now - crawling was his preferred method of locomotion. This weekend Spencer mastered the art of standing up in the middle of a room - not needing furniture or a wall or anything. He just plants his feet, walks his hands in while sticking his tush way up in the air until he finds his balance point and can lift his hands off the floor. So now he toddles everywhere. And loves it! And I love not carrying the heavy dude everywhere too!

Spencer has been 'socializing' with the older infants, who all are all toddlers, for several months now. They took interest in him once he started moving around and didn't just sit there like a lump of clay. He's one of the 'big guys.' So strange as he was by far the youngest baby in the room from March until July last year. Now there are only two older than him, and a whole slew of new little ones who are not even crawling yet. To prove the point, Spencer has now 'graduated' to one of the two big cribs in the room. Kind of like stepping stones. He was in a 'top bunk' crib as an infant, then moved to a 'bottom bunk' crib when he was able to pull himself up (and was pretty darn heavy to lift into an upper crib!) Now he's near the top of the chain. Unbelievable!