It’s shocking how little I’ve blogged about Finn. He’s about midway between 10 and 11 months old now, and I don’t know that I’ve written about him more than two or three times, including his quick birth announcement. Cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon…

Anyway, this week he has begun to stand up on his own at some length. He’s occasionally accidentally stood up for a few seconds, but now he lets go of whatever he’s holding on to and stands confidently, twisting around to grab other things or even to pick big heavy things (like a hippo walk-behind toy) up. He’s very close to taking his first steps. Sometimes if you reach for him as he’s standing there, you’ll start to see one of his feet twitch a little and you can tell he’s thinking about moving it, but then he lowers himself and crawls to you instead.

He’s not talking yet, but he pretty consistently says “duh” when the dog is around (though that’s his main word for most things, so I’m not sure it counts). He had been signing “more” for food, but he’s left that behind. He waves goodbye and does “stick-em-up,” which is where we put him in his little booster seat and squeal “stick-em-up” at him and fling our hands into the air, whereupon he flings his own hands up, allowing us to snap the dinner tray into place. We did this with Lennie too.

He has eight teeth and has had them for months (I think). He got teeth early just like Lennie (but earlier).

He continues to be an absurdly happy baby, though he’ll now occasionally protest loudly if something gets taken away from him (which happens often when Lennie’s around and feeling territorial about her stuff). (See the picture, which I wish we had in full color but which a stray finger caused to be taken accidentally with some weird color-extraction setting turned on.)

This weekend, I got a football out in anticipation of tossing it around some before the Super Bowl (it rained, so we didn’t), and Finn loved chasing it around on the floor. He also really likes driving cars around on the ground. This isn’t something Lennie ever did, and it’s not something we taught him. He’s just naturally more interested in things with wheels than Lennie ever was.

I haven’t noticed him doing it a lot in the last couple of weeks, but for a while, he would bob his whole body to dance to music. More recently, he’s taken to bouncing his arm up and down conductor-style when he hears a catchy tune.

He’s beginning to get something of a mullet. By the next time I manage to blog about him, he’ll probably be a teen-ager, and we’ll have to see if mullets are back in style then and if he’s one of the cool kids who has one.