Milestone extravaganza

I was thinking the other morning of possible reasons why Cole is still waking up every 2 hours (sometimes 3 if we're lucky). It seems I'm always thinking of reasons why this is so. It probably just boils down to high metabolism. He's hungry a lot and it wakes him up. But of course my brain does not want as simple an answer as that, so it goes to his developmental milestones.
It dawned on me that Cole has been through a lot developmentally over the past 4 weeks. He's learned how to sit up on his own and then from there he began to practice crawling and then he learned how to crawl and now can cover a lot of territory in a short amount of time. From there he has started to pull himself up to a standing position. Just the other night I recorded on my iPhone Cole pulling himself up to a stand in his crib. Immediately after that Keith had to move the mattress down to the next level for Cole's safety.
Often when Cole wakes up in the middle of the night we find him crawling around the crib looking distressed. It makes me wonder, did he wake up and find himself crawling? I've read that babies will often practice their new skill at night in their sleep. And often this disrupts their sleep (which seems obvious anyway- I mean if I was moving around in my sleep, I'd probably wake up too.)
Emotionally he's also been experiencing more stranger and separation anxiety. The separation anxiety occurs in the morning when Keith drops him off at day care. Cole now understands that we leave him there. He's aware of Keith leaving and me picking him up. When Keith drops him off Cole loses it and starts to cry. This breaks poor Keith's heart. I am so thankful I don't have that job. I think it would be too hard to function if I saw the look on his face when he realized I was leaving. It would be heart wrenching and I'd probably be a total wreck by the time I arrived to work. So thankfully, my husband suffers in the morning for the both of us. Then when I get to daycare in the afternoon, he gets upset if he sees me and I put my milk in the fridge before I physically pick him up and give him a hug. He's also aware of time. According to his teacher, on his cranky days (which are few and far between) he cries if it's 4 pm and I am not there.
The separation anxiety also occurs when we put him to sleep at night and when we wake up to feed him in the middle of the night. He wakes up and we are not there, so he cries for us.
It's really hard to believe how much he is growing and how fast it is happening. This weekend he was in the hallway crawling and we were standing on either side of him, and I realized that soon he will be walking. And this little baby on his hands and knees will become a little boy padding across the floor on his bare feet.
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Here are the promised pictures.

Here is excited Cole crawling to Daddy.

Here is Cole tentatively touching the wall as he moves from the living room into the dining room.

Here is Cole crawling to the end table. It's like he's finally getting to look at everything close up.

Sent from my iPhone