At ten and a half months, Nolan is getting ready to walk. What he does these days is pull himself or lean himself into a standing position against any neighboring wall or furniture or toy that will support his weight, and then try his best to side-step walk his way as far as he can go and still have support. He might occasionally take one or two steps to get to the next object that he can hold onto, but more often if he gets to a gap, he'll gently lower down into a crawling position, scoot over to the next object, and stand back up. Tonight (when this photo to the right was taken), Nolan lapped the living room several times while Paulette and I wound down for the evening watching the box de l'idiot.

I recently acquired a brand new camera, which has much cooler features and boots up much faster than our previous dealy. So far, I have yet to figure out if I can make this thing work any better in low light settings than I could manage with the previous camera, but I'm still getting some decent shots. Alas, alack, Nolan doesn't seem to be smiling in as many of the good shots as he does in the slightly blurry ones.

The fact is, Nolan is rather a smiley guy. When he's not recovering from a cold -- as he has been these past few days -- he smiles every bit as much as Alexander ever did (and still does). His favorite activity these days, it seems to me, is to convince his daddy to hold him upside down and shake him for loose change. Boy, does that bring out the giggles. He's also just starting to be ticklish, which is providing no end of fun for his big brother to exploit.

Nolan is starting to sign to us now. We haven't been as diligent about using signs with Nolan as we had been with Alexander at this age, yet he's picking up on our feeble attempts, nonetheless. He's signing for "all done" (arms straight up), "hello" (waving -- he uses both hands, which is durn cute), and he may possibly be getting the idea for how to sign for "more" and/or "eat". He claps, too, which is more of a programmed behavior for his age than a genuine sign, but we love to clap back and it just brings out more smiles. He likes to mimic us shaking our heads for "No", but hasn't quite gotten the hang of nodding for "Yes."

A couple of days ago, when I posted an entry about how Alexander is doing, it occurred to me to worry about short-changing Nolan. He is the second child, and I don't want to give anyone the impression that he's any less important to me or Paulette than Alex is. I also knew while I was preparing Alex's entry that I'd be posting about the little guy with an entry all his own, soon enough. But it remains a concern. Are we giving him enough quality time and attention? Are we letting Alex hog the show? And, for that matter, are we being unfair to Alex when we have to drop what we're doing with the older child to make sure the younger child is okay? I think about it, and I do what I can to address it, but that doesn't mean that I'm managing to get the balance exactly right.

Nolan chews stuff. He puts stuff in his mouth all the time. Not vegetables... he knows better than to try gnawing on a soft veggie we put before him. But newspapers? Clothing? I'm well aware that this is normal behavior, but it means we have to child proof some things differently from the way we had to for Alex at the same age. The only non-food that Alex ever made a habit of putting in his mouth was any foam toys -- nerf balls, bathtub letters, that sort of thing.

So consider the following picture, with which I shall close today's entry. This is from tonight, and we see Alex and Nolan playing in their playroom. Alex has a jingle bell toy, which he was playing with but is now putting into his mouth, while Alexander considers a bite mark in one of his nerf footballs. I love the juxtaposition. And yet... who put that bite mark there? There is no guarantee that it was Nolan. Alex has chewed on foam toys that we know of as recently as a couple of months ago.

As the two get older, I fear that knowing just who did what damage is going to become increasingly difficult.