template changes and suggestions

So, I've been playing around a bit with the template of this blog. Thought I'd try to give it a little character and make it look a little less prefab (which it is, of course). You'll notice the banner image at the top, and I've added height and weight tallies on the side. I'll update H & W after his checkups. I have a few other ideas - maybe a rotating 'picture of the day' thing, or I thought an occasional poll would be fun. Maybe a new foods checklist. Any other suggestions for this blog? Anything you've been staying up at night thinking 'jeez, I wish they would just do X'? Maybe I'll try to look around at some other baby blogs to see what other parents are up to.

OK, enough blog stuff. Liam is growing and changing weekly and daily, it seems. Just in the course of two weeks he is learning how to grab things. Two weeks ago, he would reach out with his hand in kind of a claw shape - hoping to hook whatever was in front of him and reel it in. Not so effective. A couple days later, he figured out that his hands could work as a grabbing tool, and for the last couple weeks, he's been practicing grabbing hair and small toys. He's particularly tenacious when it comes to hair. One really interesting thing he does is grab the thumb of his opposite hand and splay out the fingers. I'll have to post a picture, if I can get one of him doing this motion. It's like his right hand is out saying stop, but his left hand is grabbing his right thumb. He was helping me cook the other day when I watched him reach over from this right side, grab the top of a loaf of bread and drag it over to his chair. It was incredible. It was very purposeful, he knew exactly what he wanted to get and he did it. In other developmental milestones, he's much better at tummy time, he's starting to push his torso up with his arms, and he's getting better at rolling. Right now we're practicing sitting up - which we hope he'll have a handle on by Christmas. No pressure, though.