I blinked.

Something has happened in the past few months and I completely missed it.

Somewhere along the line my baby has turned into a functioning, communicating little boy.

Sure, he still crawls everywhere and babbles mostly, but I can see the look of concentration on his face as he tries so hard to make words come out of his cute little mouth.

Aaron has started signing more and more. He is up to "bye bye", "more", "all done" and "milk". Yesterday he was sitting in his high chair dropping cheerios over the edge one by one and then waving at them as they hit the floor.

He has also discovered his nose. Last night at dinner he had a pea on the tip of his finger and he was slowly putting it on his nose. I thought it was random until the pea fell off of his finger and he stopped doing it. And, of course, with the discovery of the nose comes the discovery that his finger fits perfectly into the nose. Oh the look of sheer delight that comes onto his face as he crams that little finger straight up his nostril.

This morning at breakfast Aaron was staring at Nathaniel going, "Bruh...bruh...bruh..." trying so hard to get out "brother". He also says, "Mama" and "dada". And although he has no words for it yet, he is always super excited to see the cats. That usually gets a yell out of him.

He also has discovered his own will, and that it is separate from his brother's will. They were playing with light sabers the other morning and Nathaniel tried taking Aaron's away from him. All of a sudden I heard a new sound out of Aaron. It was a territorial, "Stop it!!" yell. I was so proud of him for standing his ground.

He has also realized cause and effect. Last night he ripped out a good fart and it surprised him. Sam and I laughed at him and he immediately kept trying to do it again. That was amusing.

Overall, he is 100% boy. He dives into life head first (sometimes literally) and is always trying to go places. He tries to walk, but then dives to the floor in a bear crawl (hands and feet) because it gets him to where he's going faster. I'm amazed.

It seems like just yesterday he was a little baby, content to simply sleep in his sling as Nathaniel and I walked around and played. Now, I can barely wear him anywhere anymore because he is so eager to interact with his world.

It's going too fast.