Where Did the Year Go?

We were at the doctor's yesterday and I had to make a follow up appointment for 3 weeks out. I asked the very nice receptionist, "What date is 3 weeks from now?" December 4th. Holy cow! It's like 6 weeks until Christmas?!?!? Sorry, I'm having a deer in the headlights moment. It seems like Luke was just born yesterday, much less almost 10 months ago. Wow. Guess I better get on the schtick and get Christmas presents bought, eh?

You might be wondering why we were at the doctor's? Well, we had Luke's regularly scheduled 9-month checkup. It was opportunistic as it turns out his cold morphed into an ear infection. Aha! That explains the crankiness. And, here I thought it was teething. Ooops.

In the midst of the fogginess of being sick, Luke was very timely with a new trick. Daddy had just had one of those days on Monday. He tried working from home and the cable went out along with the internet. Then, he tried to work from Panera, but configuration on his computer wouldn't let him connect. It just wasn't a good start to his day. But, he was greeted when he came home by Luke clapping! We now clap at anything and everything...clapping for a Cheerio that made it into his mouth, clapping that Pinochle sneezed, clapping that the telephone rang. It's quite funny actually. I'm thrilled for a bit more interactive communication!! At least we can clap back and forth.

In other developmental news, Luke pushed his lawnmower around the kitchen numerous times the other night. Mike ran for the video camera and I jumped for my cell phone to send a quick pic to Grandma. After 20 minutes of realizing that he must be doing something really cool to get Mommy and Daddy cheering for him so much, he decided he was ready to crawl again and hasn't tried the trick again since. I keep placing him behind the lawnmower but he just squats back down and goes for the safer furniture cruising. I have this strange feeling though that those 6 weeks until Christmas may bring about big changes in the walking department. We'll see!