Discriminating baby is discriminating.

Jolly has rejected the chocolate from his advent calendar. This is pretty remarkable, considering that he has not EVER rejected chocolate of any kind before - in fact, I didn't think it was possible. I tasted the piece he rejected, and think the only conclusion is that he is a discriminating chocoholic... this is pretty terrible chocolate. Well, it's good that he has standards... and next year we'll try a different advent calendar scheme!

[Edited to add: he has over the course of the afternoon tried TWICE more to eat the chocolate sitting on the table. He gamely spotted the chocolate, looked delighted, put it in his mouth and bit down. Each time, he got this horrified look and spits it out again. I finally moved the chocolate to the compost, which pains me to do, because we never throw away food, but this is just so not worth it!]

Things that Jolly does NOT reject are pastries from our local bakery. Good lord, can he put away a good deal of cinnamon roll. He will eat pieces we have broken off but prefers to grab a pastry the size of his head in his little hands and start gnawing away at it. Unfortunately, said bakery will be closing its doors at the end of the month. We've been cranking through the Kuebler-Ross stages of grief - I think I'm currently at "bargaining". We will really, really miss our weekly mummy-son dates there.

Jolly is shaping up to be a little cheeky daredevil. His new favorite thing is being thrown onto our bed, the higher the better. He also likes climbing onto things (the heaters! the ottoman! the chairs!) and then throwing himself off to be caught by us.

He also is starting to do helpful things. He can unlatch and open the dishwasher (not helpful, especially if it's been loaded with knives or is running!) but he can also unload it, toddling over to us and handing us plates/cups to put away. He also tries to put things away, now, after a whole lot of working on that with him... Tearing books out of shelves and unpacking things is still a big hit, but he's now starting to get that he's supposed to put things back when he's done, at least sometimes, which is amazing.

He's still not talking very much, but he is definitely getting a lot of receptive language (can point out things in books, go do things you ask if he feels like it). That communication is pretty great! He is just now sometimes saying "nomnomnom", which is hilarious. Especially used for chocolate and pastries, obviously. :)

He just had a haircut at the barber, and it's super-cute. To haircut or not haircut is I think on the roster as the ONLY parenting disagreement that we've ever had (well, there might have been "does he need an undershirt" once or twice, but that was very temporary). I won this round because Jolly started tugging at the hair in his eyes a lot throughout the day. I think this will probably not continue to be a disagreement for very much longer, since soon Jolly will start having opinions about this own hair.

He's starting to play with more and more of his toys in the intended way. (Well, except for the garter from one of our teddy bears, which is the most popular slingshot of all time.) Puzzles still elude him, but he likes stacking rings and running the car down the chutes and loading cars onto his ferry. He's also starting to really play with other kids, mainly chase, which is so fun to watch!

He's such a little kid now, not a baby anymore, and it's so fun to watch him explore more and more of his world.