Seven The record stands at seven. Seven short, wabbly steps in a row, in the same direction, is the best Hannes has done so far. He takes shorter sprints - say, 4-5 steps - all the time, and even twirls sometimes. He's fast, but his endurance is not the best, it looks like.
It is amazing, though. It's hard to tell who is the happiest when he walks, the person sending him off, the one catching him, or Hannes himself. If you could bottle up happiness and turn it into energy, we could heat up a mid-sized Finnish town with one of Hannes's walks.
Baby steps Yes. Hannes has taken his first unaided steps. Hooray! He takes small steps, baby steps, all the time now, just moving from one safe place (like the couch) to another (the coffee table, "and hey, while I am at it, I may as well grab the remote control"). It's not that he walks to the bathroom or anything, but I would guess that he spends more time in a vertical than horizontal position these days.
And he looks so happy doing it.
I know I have been a bad blogger this year, and I will definitely try to be better in 2004. Meanwhile, Merry Christmas to everybody. We're going to take a jump start on the holidays this year as we'll have a little Christmas dinner here first, and then another in Stockholm on Christmas Eve. Ho, ho, ho.
This is Hannes Hannes is really into phones. Not only does he go after my mobile phone the second he sees it, he also takes remote controls, little cups, and tin lids and uses them as a phone. He holds the "phone" next to his year and laughs and talks and talks and laughs. It is really, really, cute.
Lately, there've been several long distance calls to Santa. He also likes to call Grandma, Grandpa, Dad (sitting 2 feet away) and Mom (the same).
A lot of time it looks as if Hannes was simply my personal assistant as he takes the phone, dials the number, talks and laughs into the phone, and then gives it to me. So now we know. "Ta ta ta tuu ta ta ta, he he he" means "This is Hannes from Risto's office, hold on" in Hannes-talk.
You'd better watch out, you'd better not cry We got our first snow yesterday. Perfect, since it's only a week until Christmas. Jessica and I kinda made a decision pretty early on that we wouldn't go totally overboard with presents to Hannes. 'Cause, basically, he won't really have a clue, except that he'll probably love having a lot of people admiring whatever his latest trick will be in a week and a half.
However, I can feel this holiday spirit wiping me out, and I would want to get him something. We went to the Christmas market in downtown Helsinki today, and we bought Hannes a little something -- behind his back, literally. It was a nice little toy kinda thing, but it added some fuel into my Christmas flame. Gotta go shopping next week. Not only for Hannes, but for Jessica, too! And Mom and Dad and Jessi's sister and brother and oh yeah, him and her!
Walking the walk, talking the talk One thing that everybody's asking me these days - when I talk about Hannes, my 1-year-old son - is if Hannes walks. Walking is a big thing, walking's huge. Basically, when a baby gets upright, he becomes a real human, and leaves the monkey world for monkeys. Not the monkeying around, necessarily.
Oh, Hannes doesn't walk yet. He can stand up, especially if he doesn't notice that he's not leaning on anything, but taking that first step seems to be a feat Hannes is just not ready for.
But oh boy, does he talk. From the second he wakes up to the second he falls asleep. For the past few weeks, all he said was variations of t and vowels. You know, "tatata," "to to to," "teteteeetee". Yesterday, he switched to "k": "kakakaka," "kokokoko." Even if we don't really know what he's saying, we do understand him.
