That's two steps for Elias

On Friday, we saw Elias stand up by himself and take two steps! We were ecstatic, of course, which probably scared him enough to promptly sit down. Then once the video recorder was on he tried to stand up a couple times. I think maybe some of the "cars" he received for his birthday have helped him to acquire a taste for standing up and going.

We are all signed up for the Race for the Cure this year, the 5K walk. Here is Elias's page where his fans can sponsor him:

http://race.komenoregon.org/site/TR?pg=personal&fr_id=1010&px=1125491

I also got Elias a gmail account, elias.williams. Who knows if it will still be valid years from now when he is able to use it, but I wanted to reserve his name just in case.

Elias turns 1

Elias is now 1! His birthday party was a great succes: he had nothing but fun for several hours as about four dozen people came to our house to help celebrate. I think the only time he cried, for just about three seconds, was when he popped a balloon (a "bloo-bloo-bloo") right in front of him. I saw him do this, and then he looked startled so I started clapping and said "yeah!" to help him see this as a Fun Thing, but after maybe five seconds of thinking about it he was moved to a cry, so I swooped him up into some instant-gratification bounces.

The rest of the day he played with many toys, with some water in the pool, and with some other babies, although I think for the most part he didn't notice the hordes of people that had descended around him, so he wasn't overwhelmed. Amy and I were fairly delirious during the party from the heat and the excitement of hosting, but I was the lucky one to hang with the Big Man most of the day, and it really was a great and memorable experience.

I'm excited that there will be some video and pictures that Elias can look at later in life -- I think all I have from my 1st birthday party is a Polaroid of me in a high chair with a huge, chocolate-frosting covered grin on my face.

Quoting Bjarne

A pithy antidote to many flavors of software development Kool Aid:

"It is important to remember that a programming language is only a tool. Once you master the basic concepts of a language, such as C++, it is far more important to gain a good understanding of an application area and of the problem you are trying to solve than it is to study the minute technical details of C++."

Bjarne Stroustrup

Cat/Dog

In the month that I haven't blogged, Elias has really picked up some mental velocity. He loves books, much more than I ever would have guessed he could at this age. Put him down to play amongst his toys, and it isn't long before he's settled on flipping through a book over and over. He will also bring me books, and once I start reading to him he really sees no reason for the show to ever stop.

For a while he was calling both cats and dogs "daw", but recently he can, sometimes, say "ca(t)" [with no T]. That's right, he's really starting to try to say the right words for objects. "Balloon" was one of the first. Last night he was sort of able to say "moon" during the nightly read. And he definitely recognizes these words (and many others) -- when I say "where's the moon?" his eyes go right to it on the page, and often he will point.

This is all in line with the Montessori point that a baby will seem to be making no progress at all for a given faculty, and then suddenly there is a significant ability manifests itself. Of course, what is happening is the mental processing takes place over days and weeks, as preparation and foundation for the eventual power, like a growing seed that is not noticed until it bursts out of the ground.

For this reason I'm quite glad to keep going over counting numbers with Elias. Some day soon I think it will pay off big, he will really get counting and numbers. And I expect it will help his other conceptual development, due to the interrelation between the Conceptual and the Mathematical.