Happy Halloween! (And 10 month Update.)

Can you believe Hugo is already 10 months old? Seriously. TEN MONTHS. We sort of passed right by the last couple of monthly updates, so I thought it would be nice to do a little post about what the H-bomb's been up to lately.

Hugo's inaugural Halloween costume - a lion, the king of the jungle - ensured that everyone would finally see how ferocious a beast he truly is.

I guess he doesn't seem so ferocious in the photo above, but in person, wow...fierce.

In addition to costuming our child and eating large amounts of treat-sized candies, we managed to fit in another seasonally appropriate activity by visiting a lovely little pumpkin patch in Petaluma, about 40 miles north of San Francisco.

Marty and I have really been enjoying watching Hugo grow up. The past couple of months have been so much fun for us as a family, and we continue to be amazed by how quickly our little guy is gaining new skills and developing his personality. He's such a friendly, social and quick-to-smile baby.

He is definitely a chatterbox, and is now starting to have a bit of a vocabulary to support his incredibly loud voice. He has a few words that we can confidently say he uses: Mama, Dada, bye-bye, nom-nom (like “yummy”) and duck. DUCK? Duck. He also makes a really good effort repeating sounds and words we say - like "up," and he always tries to imitate animal sounds when we're reading together. Oh, and since I couldn't figure out what sound a fish made, I taught him how to make fish lips!

We still can't brag about his sleeping. He's not much of a sleeper, this one…still waking up a couple of times at night, not really digging the naps, all that kinda stuff.

Physically, he's working on all the things a typical 10-month-old works on. He's pulling up to kneeling and standing and holding on to furniture to stand up. He's super-mobile and always on the move, army crawling like a madman and "hands and knees" crawling on occasion, moving from crawling to sitting and back down again with ease. He seems to be faster with the army crawl, so he sticks to that if he needs the speed - you know, when he's trying to get something I don't want him to have. His new favorite move is lifting up onto his hands and feet like downward dog.

His eating is pretty impressive these days as well. After a week or so of refusing all food because he wasn't feeling well, eating has gotten back on track. At this point, he definitely prefers to eat whatever Marty and I are eating to the baby food purees. He gets quite excited at the sight of little cutie oranges, bananas and raspberries.

As usual, we've kept very busy the past couple of months.

From meeting Hugo's buds and my mommy friends at the playground...

To hanging with our friends and having a little fun with the hose and some kitchen gear...

And riding on the crazy toys at the park...

Even celebrating one of his best bud's first birthday in Napa...

(There isn't a single picture in this series with the mamas and kiddos looking good, so, naturally, I picked the one where the mamas looked good!)

Hugo even got to meet some Minnesota friends in Sonoma, where we snapped this fun little family pic. (Thanks for making time for us Steph & Sarah!)

We're pretty psyched that we managed to make it 10 months and even fit in a move to our new house. Hugo love his new house, and so do we. There's just something about the new place that makes him look tough, like the Brawny Man.
His new room provides another big space for him to play - especially useful eaaaaarly in the morning, as the sun comes up, when Daddy and Hugo wake up to spend some time together.
And for you lucky readers who stuck with me on this kind of long post, here's a shot of the cutest little baby butt in the entire world.
xo