Today Adrian was crawling around playing like mad. He was playing outside in the grass for a while (lots of leaves to hold and eat), crawling around on our tiled patio (basketballs to chase, basketball hoops to reach for, various random items of furniture to pull up on and smack his palm against), and then there was the always amusing spectacle of Big Brother Julian doing Big Brother stuff, and Daddy raking leaves.

Then he came inside and examined all of the pots and pans in the cupboard, examined all of the canned goods on the bottom shelf of the pantry, gnawed several boxes in the recycling bin, ate half a teething biscuit, knocked some tupperware containers around, explored the bottom shelf of the dishwasher (and attempted to climb inside), and gnawed on his big brother's wooden train tracks.

I know, pretty damn exciting! Occasionally he had to come back to Mommy Home Base and nurse a little bit, or take a little snooze on my back in the carrier. Then it was back down, getting into stuff.

Dan and Julian took Bugs out for a walk, and when they came back Dan went right into the garage to get Bugs' dinner WITHOUT (gasp!) picking Adrian up.

He immediately started crawling towards the garage, calling "DADADADADA!"

I yelled out to Dan, "He's calling you!"

Adrian called again, "DADADADA!"

Dan came inside and talked to Adrian a little bit, still without picking him up. Then he left the room again.

"DADADADADADADADA!!!!"

Mind you, he hadn't made this sound all day, at least not that I had heard.

Dan came back, played with Adrian, then put him down again.

"DADADADADA!"

So yeah, definitely a Dada thing. Julian's first actual word was "Doggie", but he said "Dada" pretty early. He didn't say "Mama" until much, much later. We would play games and I would point to everyone and he would immediately name Doggie, Daddy, Julian, etc., but me? Nothing. I got a tight-lipped refusal to be named. I was calling myself She Who Shall Be Be Nameless for a while.

I've read that this phenomenon is somewhat common, and it's theorized that it happens because it takes babies a while to recognize that they are a separate being from their mothers. So yes, they know Daddy and Doggie and all the other members of the family, but the Boobed One over there is in a different category. Part Self and part Other.

I'm glad that Adrian knows his Daddy's name. It's super cute. I'm sure he'll pick up on Doggie and Juju pretty quickly too. We are kicking in with the sign language finally, so I'm excited to have him start signing for "more" and "milk" and "eat" and "drink". But I hope it doesn't take *too* long for him to say "Mama", because that's one of the sweetest sounds around.