Wow! Doesn't time fly? I can remember so clearly the day Reuben was born and now he's almost a year old - and has a little brother!!!!! He is full of energy at the moment and Nathan taught him to crawl last week while he had time off of work after Joel's birth. Reuben had been so close to getting the crawling thing happening, it was just a matter of getting the coordination of arms and legs all working at the right time. Now Nathan's back at work and I have a crawling baby on my hands who is also pulling himself up to standing. Needless to say, we have been baby-proofing everything now and are also having the 'fun' job of teaching Reuben what he is- and is not- allowed to touch. I'm actually surprised at how independent he is and he doesn't always listen when you tell him 'don't touch' the first time and wants to go back two or three times afterwards to see the very thing we tell him he's not allowed to play with. :) I guess we will be learing a lot about consistency and boundaries in the coming weeks/months!!!
He is still as gorgeous as always and tries to sing along to music and sways back and forth and sometimes claps as well when there's a CD on or one of us is singing to him - VERY cute! He babbles a lot and actually sounds as thought he's trying to make words rather than just 'bababa' noises. He finds Joel fascinating although he doesn't really understand how to be gentle with him at the moment. For some reason, little children like to go for the face and/or eyes on babies so I have to watch him closely when he's around his brother.
I think he's too young to be jealous which is nice and I guess he'll never remember life without a sibling but I know I find it challenging juggling the two sometimes, especially when they both want my attention at the same time. Because Reuben isn't walking yet, I am often putting one baby down in order to pick up the other and sometimes, inevitably, one gets left to grizzle so I can take care of the other one. I hate it when that happens but I guess it's a part of being a family and learning that the world doesn't revolve around you. :)
Joel is doing really well and is learning to go to sleep on his own in his own bed which is great. I don't remember Reuben crying as much but I'm pretty sure he did, I just don't remember because it was so long ago now and he goes to bed so easily. In fact, if Reuben ever cries, you know something is wrong because it's just not his personality style to cry unless he's really upset.
Let's see... what else has Reuben learned lately? He loves his books and he also is figuring out how to put the shapes into the box with the shapes cut out of the lid (there are shapes like triangle, square, circle, star, etc. and you put the same shaped blocks into the corresponding hole to get them into the box and Reuben can do several of them on his own - I was quite impressed that a 10 month old could do that but I'm biased anyway so you can form your own judgments!)
Life is very busy but so exciting at the same time. I'm trying to adjust to the sleep deprivation which is probably the hardest thing to cope with at the moment. Speaking of sleep, I actually have two babies asleep at the same time right now so I'm going to finish this off and head to bed for a cat nap before one of them wakes. I'll add a couple of photos of my little man- the one of him in the bath is taken with his little friend David, our friends Reuben and Katie's little boy. I thought it was very cute. :) I'll add one of Joel too, for those of you who aren't on Facebook and can't see all my photos on there. We took it while giving him a bath last night (he likes his baths.)
