alexei at 13 months - installment #3

our third set of photos from alexei's 13th month ;)
here he is learning to slide with grandpa. grandma and grandpa got him this cool little slide that can be indoor or outdoor for his birthday. right now it's gracing their formal living room - the mark of a true grandparent house. :)

here is alexei taking some of his first steps! he just started walking since july 4th. first with a push walker that dad's side of the family gave him for his birthday ( a pooh bear train) which he absolutely loves, and then the next day he decided to try to walk on his own. two days ago he started walking around alot - like rather than crawling. he had been taking maybe 8-10 steps to me or nick, but now he is cruising, actually more like running all over the place. i think he decided to skip the walking part. i wonder who his daddy is? ;)
this morning he heard nick talking in the kitchen and said "da da" for the first time and walked in and found him. he kept saying da da when he was with him, it was really cute. he has been saying mama for a few months but besides that, "uh-oh" was his only other word and he just started saying that when he dropped things a couple of weeks ago.

here is daddy pulling alexei around the backyard. we have a little "hill" in our backyard he loves to roll down. he has only flipped over once. ask nick about that. ;) he was fine.

if you look closely, you can see his first tooth on the bottom left. he got that on 6/20/08 - i think he is working hard on his second one.

he is starting to gain weight again. he lost a lot while he was on the first two rounds of antibiotics for a nasty ear infection we have been fighting for a month. he didn't want to eat any solids, just nurse. thankfully during this third round we are almost finished with, he still has an appetite and his stomach isn't as upset. since he had the hand foot and mouth disease over his birthday weekend, he has had another cold, was healthy for a week or so and then got this ear infection that has been crazy persistent. please pray that he will totally heal b/c if it isn't totally cleared up when we go back to the pediatrician next week we either need to go see an allergist to see if he is truly allergic to penacillin drugs (he had a reaction to amoxacillin when he was 8 months old) so we can have more options to treat him with in the future if he isn't allergic, or to an ENT to see if we need to do anything more serious. this is only his second ear infection - it's just lasted a month. poor little guy. it's hard to tell what is teething and what is ear infection at this point b/c he holds his ear when he is teething as well. thus the check up next week.
ok, i need to publish this series of installments and go get him. he's playing around in his crib. short nap today. bummer. :) thanks again for keeping up with our little lives.