Three major accomplishments today made by my six and a half month old son - he crawled up the stairs, he stood up in his crib and he did his first furniture cruising. Man, I can't believe how fast he is achieving these milestones. When I got home from work today I was asking Annika how her day was, what she did, what toys she played with, etc when she said that James went up the stairs. I wasn't sure if I should believe her because, well, girl has an active imagination and will tell you story after story about how she went to the park or played with Madalyn or something else and no, she didn't really do any of those things that day. So, I asked Kris before he left for work if James crawled up the stairs today. Yep, he did. Kris was right there so there was no chance of James falling down. Good thing we had already planned to go gate shopping tomorrow. We lost several key pieces to the gates we had up at our townhouse so we have to go buy all new ones. Argh. Anyway, gates are going up at our house tomorrow.

The second big accomplishment was standing up in his crib after his nap. I heard him moving around in there but he didn't make any noises like he was actually up and not just rolling around. Kris was upstairs getting ready for work so he went in to get him and bring him downstairs by me. And that's when he announced that James was standing in his crib hanging over the side. Um, yikes! So tomorrow the crib mattress will be lowered too.

And finally the cruising. Tonight Annika, James and I were in Annika's bedroom reading books and playing with toys. Annika was sitting on her bed singing into her microphone (girl loves to sing and dance) and James, being totally and completely enraptured by his big sister, pulled himself up to standing by her bed. Then he saw something on the bed he wanted so he took two steps to the left to try and reach it. Then he tried to go back to the right and fell down. Only a few minutes later he was back up there though and managed to take two steps to the right. His balance isn't the greatest yet but I'm guessing it won't be long before he's really cruising.

Wednesday night I employed a little child labor here at home. Annika helped me make her birthday party invitations. They came out really cute and we had all the supplies already here at home so they were free too! Annika was in charge of gluing. I cut the paper in half and then folded it in half again to make cards. Then we used foam pre-cut flowers and Annika used her glue stick to coat the back of the flower with glue and then I pasted them on to the paper. Annika, being my child so completely sometimes, would completely cover the back of the flower in glue (have you seen me butter toast, color in a box, etc? Every square inch gets covered). The glue stick was purple so you could see where there was or wasn't glue. If I tried to take the flower from her before every nook and cranny had glue she would yell "I'm not done with that yet. You give that back!" (OK, we're trying to work on her talking nicely - we're not doing so well at it.) Those flowers won't be going anywhere. She had tons of fun though so I see more "projects" in our future. Maybe we can make matching thank you notes after her birthday.