12 Weeks and Several Milestones All At Once

So NOW I am officially 12 weeks along.  After all that teetering on "Am I?" or "Aren't I?" the past few weeks.  So here is my official 12 weeks belly shot:

Still looking somewhere around the 17 week mark from the first time around.  I posted the 17 week pic in my last blog post (or maybe the one before), but here it is again:

Though my back's a little fuller/flatter and my belly's a little rounder than here.  But that may also have to do with just weighing a little more in general.

I was going to do a side-by-side comparison but realized that my fancy side-by-side photo generator is an app on my cell phone and all of these pictures were taken with my camera.  Ah well.  I'm sure I could do it on my computer somehow, but I'd rather just be lazy and not worry about it.

It's thundering.  Time to let the dogs in.

SO.....this past week has been full of surprises.  Delano started teething!  Starting last Friday night, he started waking up screaming in the middle of the night.  That first night it took him 2 hours to go back to sleep, but that's because I had gotten up with him after 10 minutes of wailing.  Since it was completely abnormal for him to wake up crying I wanted to make sure he wasn't sick or something else.  We suspected teething, but there wasn't any evidence of it.  Well.....we saw the first bottom tooth working it's way up on Tuesday, and then yesterday (Wednesday), we noticed BOTH bottom teeth working their way up!  Neither one has broken the skin yet (at least as of this morning), but it's about to happen.

My attempt at taking a picture of his little tiny tooth buds while he was eating.....no good, Mommy.

Another major milestone we tackled this week was crawling!  He still doesn't automatically crawl when you sit him down (he'll still sit there and cry like he can't move if you're not in the floor with him), but he can definitely move.  I took a video of him crawling yesterday morning (for some reason it says "error" when I try to upload it for you), but by the end of the day he was already moving around about 10 times better than in the video.  He would still much rather be walking, though, so that's not far behind!

Just hangin' out, eating an orange slice.

So I'm teaching Delano sign language.  Let me start off by saying that I'm not using signs with him because I think he's a genius or that I want him to be "advanced".  There are enough people out there who are obsessed with their child's advancement, whether it be their child's awesome growth percentile or their ability to do something before all the other kids their age can.  I'm simply teaching him basic word signs so that we can communicate before he's able to actually SAY what it is he wants to say. 

Once Delano started nodding and pointing at things, I decided to start using signs.  For a while, I was just using the signs for "eat", "more" and "finished", even though he wouldn't react to them because he had no idea what I was doing.  But after a while he started putting two and two together.  The first sign he openly understood was "more".  I would ask him if he wanted "more" while doing the sign, and he would nod his head yes.  Then I would ask him "more" in sign language without saying anything, and he would nod yes.  Then he understood "eat" as associated with food.  He doesn't always nod yes to "eat", but he'll usually look at food (like the box of crackers on the counter) when you ask, so you know he connects the two things together.  He's still kind of so-so on "finished", because the twisty hand sign for that kind of looks like I'm waving at him, so it's probably a little confusing.

Baby asking for "more".

Once he started associating signs with what they mean, I added more of them.  I added in "light" and "fan" (because he constantly points out lights and fans) as well as "drink".  And we've recently added in "bird", "flower", "fishy", "kitty" and "doggy".  What's really cool is that he's recently started signing back.  He waves at lights (which is close to the actual sign), points at fans (which is also close to the sign for "fan"), will flap an arm when you say "bird" and sniff the air when you say "flower".  And he'll smack his lips for "fish" if you do it first.

I don't want to bombard him with signs, but I would like for him to be able to tell me if he's hungry, or thirsty, or if something hurts.....and I think he'll enjoy being able to point to things like animals and be able to "say" that he knows what they are.

It just gets better and better.  :)