Obsession

Well, we have finally made it home.  We had a great Christmas/New Years visit with my family in Ohio, then headed back to Canada via Detroit.  Since we already had all our gear backed, we figured we might as well stop in the northern suburbs of Toronto to visit Shif's family for a couple days before finally heading downtown to our house.  So we had a good visit with them, too - they were amazed by how much Zain had changed in the seven weeks we were gone.  He is much bigger and has all sorts of new skills.  

You've seen a few of his new abilities in previous posts. He's added a few more in the last week or two.  Any new skill is usually accompanied by a period of complete and total obsession with practicing it.  The first obsession was getting his hands to his mouth and chewing on them.  Then, as he gained a little more control over his hands, he became fixated on getting other objects into his mouth.  

Last week, Zain discovered the existence of five small toys on the end of each of his legs.  After a few days of simply staring at them, he set out to grab these toys.  It only took a few days for him to achieve his goal.  

Got them!

Going after the feet even in the Bumbo

You can also see from the first picture above where this is all headed.  Rolling over can't be far behind.  The awareness of the feet has also furthered his obsession with trying to sit up.  

The amount of control he's gained over his hands in the last few weeks is really pretty amazing.  He can very easily grab toys and move them to more or less where he wants them to be.  He's also gotten more interested in touching different types of surfaces. 

Examining a turtle

Although the trip was fun, it's good to be home.  We're currently readjusting to having to cook and clean for ourselves.  :-)  Zain isn't really making things easy for us, though.  Sleep is still an issue.  His naps are getting shorter and it's harder and harder to get him to sleep (mainly because he's so freaking curious about everything), and he still gets up way too often at night for our sanity.  This week we're going to try to get him reset and try a couple new things to make us all a little happier!