My Little Animated Marionette

Alex is becoming more and more animated as each day passes. He balances his awake time between staring intently at his hands and insisting we talk to him. It's so cute. We don't recall that Brandon was ever as fascinated with his hands as Alex is. And he is too funny when he gets all serious and cross-eyed as he turns his hands over and over. He also does "worry hands" a lot when he's looking around at the world. He holds his hands in fists in front of him, below the chin, and kind of mashes them in to each other. At times he works on his special talent of trying to put not one, but both hands in his mouth at the same time.

Alex also loves to blow bubbles when he is cooing and gurgling at you. Coupled with the huge, huge grins we get out of him, it's a sweet and wonderful sight to see. I've also been calling him my little marionette doll as he tends to talk to me with his whole body, bringing up his hands and legs as if they were connected to a puppet master's strings. It's so cute because he's almost, almost laughing when he does it.

He is really starting to develop such a sweet and happy disposition now. He does love to give us a good hard cry right before he drops off to sleep at night. We just pace and since we know the deal now, we just rock and gently ask him to "give it up." Sometimes it takes 10 minutes, sometimes 30, but we're starting to get in a night-time routine and he's learning.

Have I mentioned yet how much I love to snuggle when he's asleep on my shoulder? And even though I look forward to putting him down so I can get things done, I also hate to put him down because I know just how quickly these moments will be gone? Sometimes it's so hard - in a good way!