End of the year

Riding on the car
Originally uploaded by Raspberry World.

What a nice holiday! Marty and I both have this week off work, so we've been doing some projects around the house and spending time with Alex. We rearranged some furniture in our living room, and Marty hooked up our new TV. Today he's installing a new faucet in our downstairs bathroom. He's been really productive!

Alex has had a productive week, too. He seems to be accomplishing new things every day now. One of his most exciting new tricks is his first word in sign language: milk. We've been signing several words to Alex for months, and this is the first one he's signed back to us. Here's a video of Alex signing "milk."

Other things Alex has done for the first time in the last week:

• Climbed the stairs all the way to the second floor (12 steps)
  
• Learned how to come down one step backwards (feet first -- the safe way)
  
• Gone a whole day without a bottle -- drinking all his milk from sippy cups by himself
  
• Got his first pair of "big boy" shoes -- size 5
  
• Learned to put toys, cups, etc through the cat door

What a big boy! There are tons of pictures up in the December gallery on Flickr if you want to catch up on all the latest developments.

Happy new year, everyone! Catch you in 2007!