if you haven't been by casa-de-xavier in a while, you may have trouble recognizing our little 9-month-old superstar. (ok, he's closer to ten months – but who's counting?) three months ago our little hero discovered that his picture was Not next to the word 'achievement' in the dictionary and has been trying to change that ever since!

milestones met: first worming, then rolling, then flopping, and finally crawling — all within the space of a month. not satisfied with his perspective crawling he pulled himself up to standing (unaided) for the first time a few days after his first crawl; and has proceeded to climb up, on, and over anything his little hands can get a hold of. xavier is now working on his seventh and eighth tooth (at the same time that most 9-month olds are getting their second or third. ouch!) and he's also started recognizing objects and people by their names. well... italian names anyway. so you can imagine that mornings at our house frequently sound like this:

"dove è il cucchiaio?"
(where is the spoon?)

"bravo!"
(good show!)

"dove è la pallina bianca"
(where is the little white ball?)

"Bravo!"
(awesome!)

"dove' ella?"
(where is ella?)

"Bravo!"
(you the Man!)

"dove' papa?"
(where is papa?)

"Bravo Piccolo!"
(holly cow! you're a friggen' genius!)

ah, the little things.

in november we shared a long weekend with grandma and grandpa barrett from texas. too short a time see all the sights in seattle, but easily long enough for little x to fall hopelessly in love with grandma B. he still sighs sometimes when he sees the whisk.

we also shared a long, december weekend with nonna and grandpa doug in san jose. x got to taste the california sunshine for the second time and also met the three beautiful daughters of the wise family for the first time. let me assure you, he didn't notice the sun much.

so then we rounded out the year with christmas at home in seattle — christmas eve with the seattle aldredges, and then christmas day with grandma and grandpa J and great grandma and great grandpa baldi. between all the company, the excitement, and the mountain of presents, you can imagine that our little man slept right through the new year.