Feisty Gus

Our sweet little Gus is showing another side of his personality these days! He is so sneaky and is very strong-willed about certain things. He still refuses to take a bottle (this has been happening for about six months now). He cries if we show him a bottle. He'll happily eat cereal with formula in it, but not a bottle. Lately, Gus has been refusing to eat cereal for me. He'll eat it from my mom and Dave, but not from me. I typically put the cereal in our white mugs, but he's been looking at the mug and turning his head. I try to give him the cereal and he turns his head, cries, and pushes the cereal away. So, I switched out the mug for one of Lucy's bowls and he ate all of his cereal. He kept craning his neck to look at the bowl.

Gus is not afraid of Lucy at all! She'll be standing up and Gus will go up to her and literally crawl up her so he can stand up, too. Lately, if she has Bunnybear in her hand (her absolute favorite thing on the planet) he'll climb up her and take it away. She screams. Lucy doesn't push or take it away, she just screams. Whatever Lucy is doing, Gus has to do, too. We were in the basement playing and Lucy wanted to ride in her car, but Gus was playing with the outside of the car. Lucy said "Mommy take cawuh (care of) Gus pweese. Wucy (Lucy) wants to pway (play) in caw (car) now." Lucy loves her puzzles, but knows that Gus can't play with them (he eats them, of course). So she moves everything up when he comes in the room, because "Gus eat dem (them)." He gets around pretty quickly. If he sees a puzzle piece, he makes a dash for it and puts it in his mouth. He'll even take it out of Lucy's hand. It's not easy to teach an almost ten month old to share.

Gus desperately wants to talk. Mama is still "Baba," but he knows it's not right, it's just the best he can do. We sing Old McDonald a lot and he "baas" for the sheep part, right along with the rest of us. We have a book that talks about a boat and the boat goes "bob, bob, bob." When I read the book to him he gives me kisses. He knows I'm not a boat, but I'm "Baba," which sounds the same to him. We were practicing "Mama" the other night and I was emphasizing the "mmmm" sound. He tried and it came out "vvvvv." At one point he said "Mama" and was so excited. I was thrilled, too.