Cute little baby update

Just in case you don't have your own cute one-year-old around . . . 

He's not walking, yet.  He's really not even close.  He cruises and crawls at high speed and often forgets he can't stand and falls down.  Fortunately he is a very determined guy and not easily frustrated and he just gets back up again.

We've never had any of this kind of baby play equipment before but as life gets busy it seemed like a good idea this time around so we borrowed this jumper from a friend.  Gregory really, really loves it and it makes dinner prep much easier for me.  But it, apparently, has a rather hypnotic effect at times:

In this picture you can see his hemangioma which I've mentioned before.  It's gotten bigger and redder as he has grown but is stable at the moment.  He's being followed by a specialist in New York (did you know there were doctors who specialized in vascular birth marks?) and it's not a big deal.  But we will most likely treat it with surgery in the next year or two.  While the redness should decrease significantly as he grows, there is also some bulkiness to it that will become more pronounced as his baby fat disappears.  The surgery is fairly simple and will also take care of the red completely.

We've enjoyed our mild winter this year and Margaret took Gregory for a spin on a riding toy on the back patio while I did some garden planning recently.

And, in close, though it can't possibly be as cute as real life, I give you this short video.  We were at Costco the other day and, as usual, the kids were sidetracked by the big-screen tv display at the front of the store.  The trailer for the 3D version of Star Wars was playing as we came in.  Joseph had just been asking about Star Wars so I paused to let the kids watch it.  The rest of the shopping trip was taken up with William (sitting in the shopping cart) sword-fighting with his pretend light saber with Joseph.  After awhile I noticed that Gregory (who was sitting next to William in the shopping cart) was trying to get in on the light saber action.  Extreme cuteness.