Things The Kid Is Doing: Month Five

WHAT THE FUCK THE KID IS FIVE AND A HALF MONTHS OLD HOW DID THAT HAPPEN

We are so close, SO CLOSE, to saying words. SO CLOSE. There are all kinds of consonants in the babbling right now, and something that sounds an awful lot like "MOM" comes out of hir mouth when they want to get my attention. I'm also pretty sure I heard an "okay" today. Even if there's not recognizable words, there's sentences and phrases coming out.

The Kid has also discovered their toes. They don't chew on them, but basically any time they can, they grab their toes.

As for other moving, we've mastered rolling over, both front-to-back and back-to-front. And we're not crawling, but somehow moving anyway. If I put hir down in hir crib while awake, I don't know what position they'll be in two minutes later. The other day I laid hir down on hir back in the crib, then laid myself down on the spare bed in the room. Two minutes later, they had rolled over, turned 90 degrees, and pulled down the crib bumper to glare at me. They are very, very good at moving around while on their belly, and I've seen the occasional forwards or backwards scoot. I can also lay hir down on hir play mat, and thirty seconds later, zie's done a 180 on their belly. It's impressive.

Mommy's Little Agent of Chaos has also figured out how to take the bar of hir play gym out of its sockets; how to detach the links attaching the toys to the bar; how to pull down the bar that we used to snap on to the crib rails and dangle toys from; how to throw things; how to palm a ball; how to drop things on the ground then look for them; how to get Mom and Dad to pick up what they dropped; how to unfold any laundry within their reach. One of my projects this weekend is to take one of the old boxes from wipes, decoupage some paper on it, and hem a bunch of fabric squares, so they have their own box with things they can take out ALL THE TIME. And then eventually learn to put back in.

We also started solids a few weeks ago. The Kid is VERY ADAMANT that they put the spoon in their mouth, so okay. Zie's not doing too badly with it, either! Zie also likes chewing on the spoon, and then doesn't want to let it go for more food, so we have frequent discussions on how if zie gives Mommy the spoon, Mommy will put more food on the spoon. So far our favorite food seems to be pureed green beans. Banana is okay too, and zie'll eat butternut squash soup and oatmeal. (Yes, I fed the baby some of the soup we had for dinner.) Avocado was no good though, apparently. We know for sure they're eating SOME of the food, although they do wind up wearing a good portion of it. That's okay. It's all good practice. The next food we plan on introducing is mango - yes, Gerber makes an organic mango puree first food, and I am excited about it.

Still no teeth yet, although chewing on everything remains a favorite pastime. Friday's new trick was putting something in hir mouth, then shaking hir head back and forth to rub hir gums on it. Also, if the something was, say, a bottle nipple, making a squeaking noise. I could live without the squeaking noise.

The Kid is still sleeping through the night just fine, but is in the process of moving from four to three naps a day. This means sometimes they really fight naps, especially the last one in the late afternoon, and so they're up forever and super cranky by bedtime. But we're also usually getting at least one nap a day that's an hour to two hours long, SOOOO. We're working on not having to nap on Mom all the time again, too.

Also The Kid is wearing 9-month-sized sleepers. WHAT. WHAT. NOT OKAY.

Zie is also working on sitting up. They can sit up on their own if they prop themselves up, and then often fall to the side. If Mom or Dad is holding their hips to stabilize, it works a bit better. Sitting up is awesome and zie wants to do it all the time. Zie also wants to sit at the table with us for dinner, even if they're not eating. So we have a giant-ass high chair in our small living/dining room, whatever. Zie also likes standing with some balance support - zie can support hir own weight on hir legs. The other night zie discovered zie can BOUNCE and this was THE MOST AMAZING DISCOVERY IT WAS GREAT. Zie GIGGLED LIKE WHOA.

Actually zie giggles a lot anyway. We can often get hir to laugh just by laughing at hir. Then zie'll scrunch up hir face and giggle at us. We giggle back. Zie giggles in response. This can go on for five minutes.

NO REGRETS SPENDING FIVE MINUTES GIGGLING WITH MY BABY, NOT EVER