Anyway, in between the exhaustion and the artificially elevated heart rate, I've been spending lots of time thinking about how my little guy has changed since he was born. For the first four + months of his life, Alistair was entirely a "carried" baby. There was no putting him down for "tummy time" - which was apparently entirely unnecessary in his case, as his head is the pride of my pediatrician's office - no daytime napping anywhere other than on top of mommy, and often, no way to stop his crying other than walking around with him for hours on end. He was incredibly timid of loud noises, so that if you raised your voice enough to be heard by someone else in an adjoining room, he'd start wailing in terror. And, if he caught sight of another baby, or heard a baby on the television, he screamed.
There are some obvious changes - he can crawl, has put on 13 pounds, and has 8 teeth. Previously (actually, up to 7 months or so), the only way to put him to bed was already sound asleep, or he would not stop screaming. Now he goes down at the same time every night for bed, awake, and he takes two scheduled naps a day!
Before, he always cried to be carried. Now I've had to learn that sometime my little guy cries to be *put down.* He loves exploring, but like many (most? all?) babies, he has an innate sense of danger - meaning, he heads straight towards it. He's found all the little places where the grout is cracking in the tiles, and tries to eat it. If hubby and I are musing for the first time whether the lower parts of the oven become too hot to be touched during use, he charges straight for the oven as if he were volunteering to check it for us. He's been crawling for a few weeks now (still army crawling), and has recently had some success in sitting himself up.
As you can imagine from his love of exploration, his timidity has been greatly reduced. My brother and sister-in-law, as well as their two children, were recently visiting, and Alistair wanted to crawl straight towards their toddler and "play" with him. He grins and giggles when he sees little kids running around, though he is still scared of loud noises/screaming (baby and I keep a quiet household together).
Sometimes we watch TV together (bad! bad! I know, no screen until 2+) , and he claps his hands when his favorite TV show comes on which is (*gasp*) the Colbert Report. =) I won't exactly allow him to continue watching it past a month or so into the future, but the bright colors, funny facial expressions, and constant laughing crack him up.
He's become way more vocal all of a sudden. He makes so many different vowel and consonant sounds in succession, but he's also learned to hiss, almost razz (he's actually, really bad at it, but he doesn't know that), and smack his lips. Those are his "pay-attention-to-me" noises that he'll make, and then look at you and wait for you to repeat.
Most impressively to me, Alistair has been doing admirably with potty training. We've really cut down on diapers, and he's learned enough to associate my "potty sound" with needing to use the potty that he'll often make it when he needs to go.
Of course, I don't enjoy all the changes! One new obsession of Alistair's is crawling into the kitchen to desperately search out some num num on the floor. The problem, beyond him snacking on floor food, is that his palate is not particularly refined. The other day I picked him up and he had stiiinky breath. A moment's fishing around in his mouth revealed a highly masticated piece of garlic.
I'm really excited for his first word, whenever he says it. I'm hoping it's momma. =)
No comments:
Post a Comment