The Cannon Hackett Chronicle: Every day is independence day

Now that he's 11 months old, Ben has seemingly hit some sort of mental milestone. He has stopped using clapping as his "more" sign language sign, and is starting to sign it more correctly every time he wants more at meal time. He can also point to my nose and some times to my mouth when I ask where they are.

Meal times are definitely more challenging these days. He went from being a spoon-fed, puree-eating champ to refusing to let me spoon-feed him at all. Although he often gags on bits real food, he prefers little bits of chopped food that he tries valiantly to feed to himself (I'd say he probably has a 25% success rate when getting the food into his mouth). I guess it's ultimately good that he's so keen to do everything all by himself. He also doesn't want anyone's help when he's walking and would rather fall than grap someone's hand. Sheesh.

eleven month Ben

Ben has also gotten into a "try to kiss everything with fur" phase. He especially seemed to enjoy trying to bestow open-mouthed kisses on the two dogs we were dog-sitting last weekend. Sadly, the pug, Titus was as interested in receiving Ben's kisses as Ben was at giving them. (See pictures below)

We recently let Ben play in the grass for the first time, and although he was initially very weirded out by it's springy spongey-ness, he ended up enjoying it a lot. (Every other time he'd been set down outside, I'd always put a blanket under him.)

I've been looking for (free!) places where I can take Ben where he can get a lot of good, safe, & independent crawling/walking time, and one of our friends suggested Landa Park's lawn. It has a huge expanse of shady St. Augustine grass, but leave it to my boy to make a bee-line for the gravel path at the edge and then try to eat the gravel... repeatedly. Ah well, at least he did get some nice outside time while it lasted!

Speaking of outside, we finally got rid of our backyard pond (in an effort to make the backyard a nice, safe place for Ben to play in). I spent all of last Sunday draining the pond and trying to save as much of the waterlily and as many fish as possible. The day before San Antonio reached a high of 108, but luckily for me, it rained the entire time I was outside working on the pond stuff. I have been trying to fill in the pond with dirt and leaves, but it seems like no matter how much dirt I buy, you can still see the pond's rubber liner. I guess I shouldn't have made the pond so raccoon-proofed/deep!

It's pretty sad to look out at what used to be the pond and see the sad hole in the ground, but I know as soon as I've gotten it filled and planted some plants there, it'll be better.