Fun Time with Liam

Meet Frank

That is Ryan's current nickname for Liam... Frank. So, meet Frank. He is getting more and more stable every day, and as he does, he crawls less and less. It's exciting to see him progress, but at the same time, I'm going to miss the cuteness of the crawling stage.

Frank


This is one of my favorite stages, the in-between crawling and walking. He loves to walk and stumble right into my arms and squeals with delight. No sooner after that, he turns around to take off on another end-target goal to walk towards, the nearby table or chair or Ryan's leg.

Baby Crawl

Emilia's 1/2 Year Report Card

Hard to believe but Emilia is now at the 1/2 year mark. We just had her pediatrician checkup today, and she passed with flying colors (i.e. everything is normal). They took the usual measurements, and here's the data:

Length = 25.75" (48%)
Weight = 14 lb 4 oz (16%)
Head Circumference = 16.6" (41%)

So she's basically a long, skinny thing with a big head ;^)

We've been a little concerned that she wasn't eating enough, but she certainly doesn't look emaciated. Her weight gain has really leveled off; however, her eating recently took off again, and she's now eating what would be considered normal for her age. So maybe we'll see a little more chubbiness next month.

The big news this month is that Em has made the giant leap into the world of crawling. She's not a true mall crawler yet, but she does get mobile with sort of a hop and lunge technique. She seems really excited about this method of transport, and her eyes will light up when she sees something she wants and now knows how to get to it.

The other major development is her sitting prowess. She just learned to stay in a seated position by herself last month. During the course of this month, she has gotten really stable in this position, and has held it for up to 30 minutes. And now she's also able to plop down to the tripod position, and then crank herself back up into the sitting position.

There are some common baby developmental milestones that we've been tracking to ensure that Em is progressing as she should. So far she has mastered the first 3 major milestones: Head Control, Rolling, and Sitting. Next up are Crawling, Standing, and Walking. Over the next few months, we'll be working on: 1) a more effective crawling technique, and 2) getting her to stand up on her own with the aid of a support. I'm also working with her on a handstand, believe it or not. She's so strong that I look for ways to challenge her, and she seems to enjoy it. Of course, I'll help her to balance her legs, but she'll do the rest of the handstand herself. We're about 50% of the way there now.

Last month we said that the new adventure for this month would be solid foods. Well, it has been a little crazy to say the least. We started off with rice cereal, and that didn't go too bad as she started to get the hang of it in a couple of days. But then we upped the ante by introducing some veggies. First up was peas, and she made some weird faces as she reluctantly ate it. Feeding her solids is always a messy proposition as she does all of the following:

Spits it back out
Sucks her thumb
Moves her head just as you're about to put the spoon in her mouth
Puts her hand in her mouth of course with a mouthful of food in there
Grabs the food bowl
Sucks her thumb
Grabs the spoon
Sucks on your arm
Grabs your hair
Clutches her bib
Sucks her thumb

I don't know what we were thinking, but we decided to try giving her some avocado. It wasn't mixed with anything - just mashed up avocado. Since we live on an avocado farm, you have to like avocados, right?! Wrong!!! I guess for some of us, including me, it's an acquired taste.

More Em Trivia:

• I call her daycare "The Spa" because she is pampered there beyond belief. She gets soothing baths, massages, skin care, hairdos, dressed up, held a lot, played with whenever she wants. She has one-on-one attention from a woman who really knows and cares about babies. It's been a couple months now, and we're over the initial anxiety of leaving your baby with a complete stranger. We feel very fortunate to have found her.
• Em no longer comfort feeds when breastfeeding. It's straight on-and-off food time now, and she is done in 15 minutes. Momma misses the days of comfort feeding. Then again... maybe not. Em used to feed for 1.5 hours every 3-4 hours.
• One of the benefits of breastfeeding is that the poop doesn't smell so bad. But now that we've introduced solids, we've been brought back to the real world of stinky poop. Pehhh-ewhh!!! Time to get her diaper trained soon!
• She's a Pisces - she's suppose to love the water. So Em is now enrolled in Baby swim classes.
• Em is also nicknamed Archie. When she disagrees with something, she forcefully arches her back.
• We're reminded at times that Em is a caulbearer with special powers. I was entertaining her by flipping pages quickly on a random book. She stuck her hand out, and grabbed what I thought was a random page in the random book. I looked at it, and it was the "Amelia" page in the Baby Name book. Weird.
• Stranger anxiety. Yup, we believe she still has it. She tends to freak out when we hand her over to someone she doesn't know. But if she has met you before (even only once or twice) she seems to remember.
• Her voice seems to be changing again. She went through a phase last month of making these gutteral sounds. Now she seems to be back to a more normal voice - at least for now. Still no real words but lots of sounds.