Genius. Clearly.

We knew Cade was a baby genius but now we have proof.

He can use sign language to ask for more food!

And yes, it is no surprise that the first bit of sign language my kid mastered is for more food. Since he has not one but two hollow legs. Please enjoy the baby sign language video but ignore the mildly distressed face. I had to pause the applesauce feeding in order to make the video.



In other Cade related milestones, he has become a champion hug-giver. Sometimes when I drop him off at school I get five hugs before I leave. (Last week these hugs were accompanied by tears twice but his teacher said the tears lasted literally 90 seconds. Like finished before I even made it to my car. Thank God.) He gives us hugs all the time all day long. It is pretty wonderful. The funniest hugs I've seen him give though were to his classmate Natalie. She had a toy Cade wanted to play with. After being told no, that's Natalie's toy right now, he gave her a hug and then sat and waited for her to share the toy. No dice. Ever the persistent young lad, he did it twice more. Natalie is a smart girl though and wasn't swayed by cute boy hugs. Good girl Natalie, that self-confidence will serve you well in life.

During some morning hugging and playing before school today, Cade started growling. It was hilarious. The best was when he growled and hugged me. Clearly this is the epitome of a bear hug. We deemed it such.

"Recess" with Mom & Dad at a
new (to us) park after school

He's also starting to pick up his toys. Not all the time of course. There are still many evenings when he pulls his books off the shelf as quickly as I put them there. (I can't even get mad or frustrated though because hello, they are books. My kid loves books and wants to stay up late to read. Awesome! Usually this earns him a few more minutes of awake time so we can read one more book...or the same book again.) But if I am cleaning up, hand him a toy and ask him to put it away, he'll enthusiastically toss it in its cubby. So that's a good start.

Finally on a similar note, he now chunks his paci into his crib in the morning. Because as we all know "your paci lives in the crib for sleep time." Monkey also lives in the crib for sleep time but is returned to the crib much more gently than the paci.

Unrelated to development milestones, we have family pictures in the morning! In all my mom wisdom, I did not think to see if Cade's clothes, upon which all three of our outfits have been planned, fit until today. So we did a little test run before bed and - whew- they fit! There would have been some serious evening closet raiding and shopping tonight had that not gone so well. Now just cross your fingers and pray to the Clean Toddler Gods that Cade, Ross and I can stay relatively clean until 9:30a tomorrow.