Kim and Murrow are both sick.  It is Murrow's first cold, and they got sick on the same day and they're going through the exact same symptoms.

What's silly is that Murrow's nose bubbles (cute & gross) have reminded both of us that we used to call him Bubble Mouth … but neither of us can remember the exact context for that name?  Did he make one big bubble with his mouth, or lots of tiny ones?

Ever since Murrow started getting up on all fours, Kim and I have been wondering when he'll crawl.  It's been a couple of weeks now that he's been scooting all over the place, mostly with an army crawl.  But we're now ready to declare him a crawler…he's not necessarily fast or coordinated.  But its good enough to scare the cat into the floorboards.

The past few days, Murrow’s gotten very good at picking up those little sweet potato star puffs and actually getting them into his mouth. Last week, when we first started giving them a try, they mostly just stuck to his palm and got thrown to the floor. Now, he loves them. Yesterday, I got him some of Barbara’s Os (no wheat + fruit juice sweetened = better than Cheerio’s). They require a little bit more chewing than the puffs, but little Mo’s up to the task.

Murrow finally goes both ways!  He’s been able to roll onto his back since late September, but he’s never been interested in rolling onto his stomach.  It seems that all of the sitting, crouching, etc. has made him more tolerant of his stomach and tonight he began rolling onto his stomach.  He loved his new trick and kept rolling back and forth between his stomach and back, showing off to his pround Momma and Poppa.

Now we just wait until he starts tumble-weeding across the house and down the stairs.

Whenever a toy is just out of Murrow’s reach, he’s always used his trusty method of falling on his stomach, rolling over onto his back, then crying for us to bring him the toy.  He’s added a new twist to this ritual, where he can now hold himself up using his arms for a few seconds, before he falls onto his stomach, then rolls over onto his back crying for us to bring him the toy.

Seriously, Murrow has become alot more physical in the past couple of days.  He’s now crouching and pulling himself up using small ledges.  Now that he has his two front teeth, is crawling next?

Tooth the First met Tooth the Second today. I called this one yesterday, thank you very much. A second little pearly white poked its little head up this morning. Good thing we stocked up on some store-bought teething biscuits the other day (Abbie’s mom has passed along a recipe for home made biscuits that we’ll be trying soon). Teething biscuits, by the way, get really disgusting really fast.

So, every day, for like the past three months, I’ve declared that I think Murrow’s teething. Yesterday Poppa says that he will pop one out today. Guess what? After a fitful night, he woke up with a pearly white (well, right now it’s just something hard that’s barely broken the surface) in the bottom right (our left). Now I’m just waiting for the first chomp. You know what I’m talking about.

Murrow’s first Christmas was a blast, we listened to Christmas songs, watched It’s A Wonderful Life and the Christmas Story…then had our traditional Chinese food dinner.  Murrow’s big gift this year was the Oxford English Dictionary.  It is so huge 9 pages are compressed onto each page and it comes with a magnifying glass to read the text.  But how else would Murrow find out “wonky” and “ginormous” were first used in the early 1900′s?

Now that Murrow is sitting up extremely well, Kim and I decided it was time to remove the incline sling from his bath.  The fun part of this change is he can now play with the water a bit more.  He hasn’t quite figured out that you can’t catch a stream of water and put it in his mouth, but he does know he can grab the sides of the tub to stop himself from falling, which eases Momma and Poppa’s mind a bit.

Gruel, the thin porridge served to orphans, is also what Murrow got for his first meal.  Who would have thought that after receiving regular feedings of boob-a-licious milk, he wouldn’t really care for a nearly tasteless paste?  I wish I would have taken the picture of momma trying to be supportive and having a taste of this rice mix, her “yuck” face was worse than his.