Catching the wave

First, a little bit of an apology about the lack of posts these days (seems like a lot of these are starting out this way lately). I didn't mean not to post. I meant to. Honest... I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!!

Bonus points for the first one to correctly identify the reference.

Seriously though, you know it is getting bad when Grandpa makes a semi-snarky comment like, "there's a baby blog?" Ok. Message received loud and clear. Give the people what they want -- and they want more G-Man. As a token of goodwill, I have made this post a picture-palooza.

Guster is now just over nine months old. As you can see from the previous post, he is now a mobile unit. Gus' crawling ability has improved dramatically from the crooked shuffle depicted in the video -- now he puts his head down and charges. Quickly. In the direction of trouble.
Alarmingly just days after crawling, Gus began pulling himself up into a standing position. Mostly Gus stands by pulling himself up and balancing himself on whatever is handy -- the ottoman, Mom or Dad's leg, the coffee table -- but recently he will occasionally just pop up from a seated position into a shaky standing position, whereupon he will wave his arms wildly and yell out before plopping back down on his butt. Guster has taken one or two small steps while balanced against furniture, but no solo steps yet.

The race for the first word is a heated one. A few weeks ago Gus began babbling, "mamamamamama" and it looked like "mom" might be his first word. But then "dadadadadad" started finding its way into his "vocabulary" and "dad" went from dark-horse to legit contender. We'll see what happens, but the smart money is on "mom." I say this because after 8 1/2 months of being Guster's favorite, I have lost the title. Gus doesn't enjoy me any less, his mom has just had an incredible spike in her popularity. When the two of us are both present and available, it's not even close -- Gustapher wants his mom. He will literally use me as a springboard pushing his feet off my chest in order to help catapult him at his mom.

But today, I was the recipient of a special honor -- I was the first one that Gus waved at. I was standing in the kitchen doing dishes, and Gus was sitting on his mom's lap. He waved at me and smiled. It was definitely purposeful and we spent the next 20 seconds waving back and forth. I will say that it felt a little less special when Gus turned to his left and started waving at a bowl of tomatoes, but still, I can say I was first.

Full-color Guster below:

The holidays were so great, we were seein' Penguins!
Not quite in the holiday spirit yet

This is more like it
For me?
Yep, it was for me.

Mom and Gus
Dad and Gus
Grandpa and Uncle Jesse and Aunt Susu
Aunt Kelli
Grandpa and Gus

Mom, Grandpa, and Great-Grandpa

Dan, Jess, and Ella

Gus and Dana

Kelly and Gus

Making his move
JoAnna, Gus, and Noah

Gus needed to borrow a pair of pants at daycare -- and they made him look like an Easter Egg
But he seemed ok with it
Gus and Mom at the Zoo
Grandpa and Gus at the Zoo
What's happening?

Bundled up.
Dad and Guster
Lovin' the lion
Face full of food
Nice pants.