Six months.

Mugshot.
I suppose I ought to be grateful that he took time out of his busy crawling-rolling-and-falling-down schedule to give us a picture for posterity, no?


One week, nine weeks, four months, and six months.
This past month has been a really big one, in terms of new things. In addition to growing absolutely enormous (we'll find out just how enormous on Wednesday when he has his next appointment), he's perfected sitting, more or less mastered crawling, pulled up to standing, and started talking. Not really talking, of course, but don't tell him that. Jim doesn't want to live in a world where "Dag nab bababa SCREEEEEE" isn't a valid sentence. I think he's also a bit more social than previously. He's especially gotten good at recognizing facial expressions. He looks concerned if someone is sad or upset, and he thinks it's hilarious when you act surprised to see him. Being bounced on the bed or held upside down are also pretty amusing.

As astonishing as these feats of cognitive prowess are, I think his physical progress kind of eclipses them this month. He can stand on his own power as long as he has something to balance with. He sits unsupported and can deliberately go from sitting to lying down, although he hasn't quite figured out how to reverse it (working on it, though - he can get to lying on one side and pushing up on one hand, but can't quite get off the ground). His crawl isn't quite that picture-perfect one-knee-at-a-time baby crawl, but he can army crawl ridiculously fast now. He can cross the whole kitchen in about two minutes if there is a super-interesting kitty on the other side.


Okay, the sitting is mostly perfected.
Some of you may recall that sleep was giving us absolute fits a month ago. Jim was waking up about 4 times a night if left in his crib and 6-8 times when co-sleeping, and all of us were pretty much cranky and delirious from lack of sleep. That has been solved, with the help of Richard Ferber and surprisingly few tears. Now he goes to bed around 7:15 each night, wakes up at 4:30 for a snack, and then back to sleep until about 6. I'll give a few details later, but for now just know that it is GLORIOUS.

We've also begun solids for real. We aren't messing around with purees and spoon-feeding at all, actually, just giving him table food a la the Baby-Led Weaning thing. The majority of what we give him probably gets smeared around his try, but he does manage to ingest quite a lot of it. So far his favorites seem to be sweet potato wedges, enchiladas, and cranberry sauce. The only thing he has seriously disliked was pasta in a rather spicy tomato sauce. He's also trying to figure out how a sippy cup works. He's figured out that you have to hold the cup while putting your mouth over the spout, but actually picking the cup up and tipping it eludes him, so he just clutches it on the ground and jams his mouth on it while grunting madly in anger that the water won't come out.

It's kind of hilarious.


Posing sedately is for schmucks.
The boy is getting to be pretty dramatic at times, actually. The latest evidence of this comes at diaper changes. Apparently with all these new movement abilities, being forced to be still for thirty seconds is an absolute torment to him. His protests don't take the form of angry yelling, though, that would be far too boring. Instead he sticks out his lower lip and begins to sob, huge fat tears rolling down his cheeks like somebody just stabbed his puppy. He just looks so theatrically tragic: "O woe is Jim! Nevermore to freely roam; never again to traverse the verdant Highways between the Kitchen and Laundry Room, chasing the Fearsome Kitty wherever He may be found!" Etc.

Actually, that's kind of hilarious too. Poor kid, nobody takes him seriously. But really, how can you take seriously somebody who will only let you change his diaper if you sing the Pink Panther theme while dancing outrageously? It's just not possible.