A couple weeks ago, Alexander began taking swimming lessons. He seems to enjoy himself quite a bit at the pool, and it's cool that he gets to spend more structured quality time with his dad. In general, any structured parent/baby activities he's had have been with his mom.

Alexander is crawling around the house like a madman, and he is also frequently working himself up into a standing position. He'll stand for up to half a minute at a time, and his balance gets better every day. Even though he was a relatively late crawler (that is, relative to the other babies his age in the primary mommy/baby class that he goes to each week), all indications are that he could start walking very soon. Good thing we house-proofed the baby! Er, uh. Baby-proofed the house.

Well, at least part of the house.

We have gates at the top of the stairs to keep him from tumbling down. But we don't have gates at the bottom of the stairs to keep him from climbing up. And he does like to climb them stairs.

All in all, I'm proud of my kid who is growing up faster than we can anticipate. He'll be doing laps around his dad in the pool in no time. :-)