Mr. Banana-Grabber:
I wonder if you can guess how you earned your new nickname. Got it yet?
You discovered your wee wee a couple of months ago, actually, but as your relationship with it has matured, your treatment of it has gotten rougher. Your daddy and I are constantly encouraging you to be nice to the family jewels because when it’s bath time and you’ve finally got access to them, you tend to try to rip them off. We might want grandkids someday, Buds! I guess it doesn’t hurt you but it hurts us to watch. So we try to distract you as best we can. And I say, “Be nice to your huevos!” more often than I ever imagined I would need to, in any context.
But the big news this month is not about your junk but about all the food you’re eating! You are LOVING your foray into solid foods. You have tried sweet potatoes, oatmeal, prunes, carrots, squash, apples, yogurt, avocado, peaches, green beans, and more. And for the most part, you like all that stuff! You are especially a fan of prunes and sweet potatoes. When I feed you in your Bumbo chair, you like to act like you’re in a rodeo on a bucking bronco. It’s really funny. You get your right hand up in the air and you jump around and try to buck out of the chair because you are so excited to be eating food.
Your two little teeth nubs have turned into real teeth! So I bought you a little toothbrush and sometimes even remember to use it. And you’re drooling so much lately that I suspect we’ll see some new teeth (up top, maybe?) in the next few weeks.
You’re sitting up on your own now for longer periods of time. Your daddy and I like to time you and make a big deal when you break your previous record. You’re pushing upwards of three minutes before falling over or crumpling in half! However, you still have no interest in rolling over, as you are still no fan of tummy time beyond the first couple of minutes. Once the novelty of being on your stomach wears off, you get very grumpy.
Speaking of very grumpy, this month your impatience really started to show itself. I mean, of course newborns and babies are impatient in general, as every time they need or want something, they cry until they get it, and sometimes they keep crying just because you made them wait so long that it hurt their feelings, but you have started communicating your impatience with an incredibly grating grunt noise, which the internet can experience in this video:
You like to hit us with this prolonged impatient grunt thing whenever you are wet or bored or in need of a change of scenery or hungry or in need of a good poop or impatient for us to shovel food into your mouth faster than you can swallow it. I’ll be honest: I cannot stand this sound. It plucks at something primal deep within me that makes me want to DO WHATEVER IT TAKES VERY QUICKLY TO MAKE THIS BABY STOP GRUNTING, which is a neat little evolutionary trick you’ve got going. All other sounds you make are adorable, but this grunt? No me gusta.
I got to celebrate my first Mother’s Day this year, and your daddy did something very sweet for me and got me a couple of things for the office with your bright-eyed face on them. It helps make my time away from you easier to know that you’re at home having fun with daddy. He takes you running with him and you guys still make your trips to the library to get new books every week or so. Every time your daddy walks into the room and you see him, you go BANANAS. He is really your favorite person on the planet, and you love to grab at his beard and give him hugs. I am grateful every day that you two are building the bond you’re building.
Daddy does a really funny impression of the way you get excited and flail around. If you’re lying on your back, your legs go crazy and your arms flap up and down and smack your thighs and tummy. When daddy does this in front of you, it makes you do it too, and I feel like I am living in some kind of wonderful madhouse of flailing limbs.
Even though you’re not keen on rolling or sitting up on your own all the time, you are really good at standing when we’re holding you. You’ve gotten even better since you learned that you can sit in the exersaucer and bounce to your heart’s content. Bounce, bounce, stand. Bounce, bounce, stand. Gnaw on whatever is in front of you. Bounce, bounce, stand. Oh, and you can scoot forward, too, when you’re on your belly, in that sweet spot of time just before you notice you’re on your tummy and get too irritated. The other day I sat your monkey friend a little ways in front of you and you scooted your way toward him and gave him a big mouth hug.
You finally got to meet your cousin Levi this month! The whole family gathered for a group portrait but you two didn’t have much to say to each other just yet. Levi slept a lot and you were very busy trying to determine why all of the people around you were yell-talking to each other and to you, since you’re not hard of hearing.
We did some pretty fun stuff this month. We took you to your second museum ever, the Stax Museum. You got to see Isaac Hayes’ big gaudy Cadillac and dance to the smooth stylings of Soul Train. I bought you a little pool for the back yard that we will enjoy this summer once the Memphis air turns to bathwater. Our inaugural swim did not go as well as I had planned because I didn’t leave the pool out in the sun for long enough to let the water heat up a little bit. So when your skin touched that cold water, you were like I DON’T THINK SO, YOU CRAZY OLD BAT and recoiled. But I proved how tough an old bat I am by sitting in 2 inches of cold water in a big plastic disc out in the yard and letting you sit on my lap in your tiny swimming trunks. I bet that was a weird things for your daddy to see when he came home that day but he very graciously did not mention my too-small bikini bottoms.
Six-month checkup on 5/7/12: 26.5 inches long (55%), 13 lbs 7 oz (3%), 42-cm head (12%)