Well here we finally are, only 5 days after your half birthday. When people ask how old you are now, I think I’ll reply “half.” People often say my kid is 1 and a half, or 4 and a half but you’re just a half. Not JUST a half – it’s an impressive half to say the least. Think of where you were 6 months and 5 days ago, and where you’re at now. Hell of a shocker, eh? But dude, the best is yet to come! Stuff like crawling, and walking and summer and MEAT and FLORIDA and beer are in your future. Some closer than others, but it starts to get pretty good from here on in.
So this month, nay, THIS WEEK, your locomotion skills have gone from 0 to 60 in a matter of moments. Now whenever I put you down on a flat surface, whether it’s lying on your back, or sitting up, you’re over on your tummy in seconds! It’s almost like you can’t get enough. Except you can get enough – I know. Since you haven’t quite figured out how to roll back to your back, there comes a moment in your tummy surfboarding fun where you’ve had ENOUGH and must be removed from this position NOW. Often, unfortunately, these moments happen in the middle of the night. You manage to roll yourself over even in sleep, and although you’re capable of soothing yourself while lying on your back, there is nothing soothing about tummy surfing and it’s usually cause for panic. Last night it was cause for panic every 2 hours. Jeez Louise, we gotta figure out this rolling back thing, you and me!
Your other developing skill is grabbing. Grabbing what, you may ask? EVERYTHING, I may answer! Favourites include my hair, my skin, and my nose, followed closely by anything paper. Between the grabbing and pulling, the slapping, the pinching, the kicking and the BITING (which MUST STOP!!!) I’m feeling a little bit battered and bruised. I keep telling myself it’s all done in love. Except the biting. That’s just mean.
We’ve gotten to the point where there has to be a Griffin radius wherever we park. Sitting at the table, anything within arms reach plus 4 inches or so is in peril. And if there is a placemat or table cloth on the table then the whole place setting or the entire table becomes fair game. And boy are you FAST! Anything that you manage to get into your little pincers all goes to the same place – your mouth. It’s a simple equation – SEE it, GRAB it, EAT it. Rinse (or not) and repeat. When we’re walking around with you, you make concerted efforts to reach for things NOT within your grasp, and will lean, lean, lean toward them until someone moves you closer! Watching your world expand beyond your arms length is really enjoyable.
We’ve been ending every day with a bath these days, for 2 reasons. One is you usually have bananas or pears or whatever the soup du jour happens to be, in places that I didn’t know food could get into. Secondly, it’s the only way we can get you into low gear, and signal that its time to go sleepy. You LOVE the bath, and you seem to be developing into a water baby, just like your mama was (and still is!) This pleases me to no end!! Dude, wait till you see the OCEAN!
It’s funny, but now that my Mat Leave is on the downhill side of the halfway mark, I feel like ever day is that much more precious and I want to spend every moment we can together doing the COOLEST of things. We just booked a camping trip for the summer which I think your going to love, we’ve been spending more time at the pool (with Daddy too!) and we just signed up for Mother Goose classes in the spring. I don’t want to waste any of this time, but I feel like it’s slowly but surely slipping away, and I hate that feeling.
We’ve been having a few feeding issues this month, mostly that there doesn’t seem to be now, or will there ever be, enough breast milk in this world to satisfy your little hungry growing tummy. We feed you cereal twice a day, now mixed with at least a half a jar of fruit of some sort, plus you’re still getting breastfed every 3 hours or so, but its just NOT ENOUGH FOOD! Holy Hannah kid, can you eat!! You’ve taken to draining both boobs in a matter of minutes, and then freaking out, because What Do You Mean There is NO MORE FOOD?? So now you get a bonus at the end of bedtime feedings – a little bit of $45 a can, Organic Baby Formula (Today I actually found it on sale for $35.) Today you had cereal and ¾ of a jar of bananas at 3:30, a breastfeeding in between, cereal and the rest of the can of bananas at 6:00, and then both boobs plus 3 ounces of formula at 7:30! Where do you PUT IT ALL??? And with all that food in your tummy, why the HECK won’t you sleep at night? I’d go into a coma if I ate the equivalent for my weight. But I also know how to roll over from my belly to my back. And put my own soother back in my mouth. Not that I need a…….never mind.
Once again, my little dude, I love you to pieces, and every single day I thank Jebus that you came along when you did. You have made us a family, and you have made our little world here a better place.
Now STOP biting me, ok??
Love Mama
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