a Few Things About Freddie Bear

First things first: Freddie Bear has started standing. Provided he has something to lean on - an ottomon, his crib railing, the sofa - he can stand for as long as I'll let him. He's also getting his knees under him and rocking back and forth on them, so I'm betting he's crawling in the next few weeks.

Second of all, Freddie has started eating (some, very small bites of ...) table food. When Jones was an infant, I read that babies are ready for table food when they start showing interest in it. Jones never really did. He'd eat anything I'd give him, but he didn't whine if I just fed him formula instead.

Since he was just a few months old, Freddie has been very aware of when people are eating. Initially, he'd just stare down a plate, but lately, he's gotten more aggressive about it. For instance, Dolly kept the boys last nite and said Freddie literally dug in to the meatloaf she was serving her boys for dinner.

Well done, Son.

Taking things like this to be Freddie's "interest" in food, I've been giving him the teeniest little bits of things, like peas or Saltines or, today, the free cookie Ingles gives out to kid shoppers (I swear he ate more of the cookie they split than Jones did; he'd literally screech if I didn't shovel it in quickly enough).

Apparently, Freddie's sees these few forays into "people food" as a license to chow down.

Today, I put Jones down for his nap and left Freddie playing in the den. A minute and a half later, I came back in and found Freddie, laying on his back, happy as a pig in slop, gnawing on a bite of bagel that Jones had left out on his breakfast plate. How in the world the child got to it, I will never know.

I guess where there's a will, there's a way.