He's got sitting skillz!

We have been working with Joseph on his sitting skills for quite awhile now. Around 5 months he started to tri-pod sit and I expected he would be sitting easily on his own by 6 months. He sort of just stalled out at tri-pod sitting for awhile. I think his impediments to sitting are a) his large head that takes a lot of work to balance and b) his love of rolling. He is impatient to sit for any length of time because rolling the length of a room is way more fun. He seems to be finally mastering his sitting skills.

This morning he sat on his own for 5 plus minutes while he chewed on a basket:

Then when we went to Target today, he sat in the cart, instead of his carseat, for the whole trip. By the end, he was tired and pretty much laid down in the seat, but we got a good 25 minutes out of him in the sitting position.

While at Target, we bought him a new toy to promote his sitting skills. A little ball that sings the alphabet and makes animal noises when you spin it. Joseph has quite enthralled this his new toy and it served its purpose - encouraged him to sit for an extended period of time.

Until he leaned back and fell over into his hamper of toys.

One note on his new toy - each letter has an animal associated with it. When the ball stops on the letter, its says the letter, the name of the animal and the sound the animal makes. I know "X" is a pretty hard letter but the animal for "X" is a X-ray fish. I mean, is this really an animal? "U" is an umbrella bird - which I really question the validity of that animal as well. I think a mythical character like unicorn would be more appropriate. And "N" is a newt. My first thought was "The best they could do for "N" was newt???" But then Rich and I started thinking about it and couldn't think of another animal that starts with "N". Who knew??? You should hear the noise that a newt makes - we can't figure out what in the world it is.