Love a Mommy

Jack's cue to hug his teddy bear or other stuffed animal is "Love a (teddy, duckie, doggie, etc.)."  He takes the animal to his left shoulder, hugs it, and pats it on the back a few times with both hands, fingers extended.  It's really adorable.

So today Jack was playing in Mommy and Daddy's room while I was folding clothes, and he was really getting very pleased with himself at being able to step on and off an under-the-bed container that I had pulled out.  So I decided he needed a hug.  But when I held my arms out, instead of just standing there accepting my hug, Jack hugged me back.  I mean really squeezed me on my back and patted my shoulders!  It was the first time he's ever given a hug.  And it was incredible.  He topped it off with an unsolicited, wide open-mouthed kiss.  He's the sweetest baby ever. 

This video is totally unrelated but was part of another project I'm working on, and it was too cute not to share.  Jack's become a total chatterbox.  Oh, and this is not representative of his stair descending abilities.  Generally he's very good at it, especially for a boy who wasn't exposed to stairs really at all until less than two months ago.  Although we tried to get him to do the scoot down the stairs one at a time on his belly method (the only safe way for babies to go down stairs, as far as I'm concerned), Jack has now taken to sitting on each step individually, then standing on the lower step.  It's not quite like the scoot on the bottom method some babies use--Jack's is a very deliberate and carefully plotted maneuver.  At any rate, I present 13 month old Jack in a morning video.