Saturday, May 28, 2011

milo the monkey, dolphin, etc.

milo has become more and more aware of his own body and what it can do. lately he's been using his feet as a second set of hands to help hold onto the larger toys.  he's also been repeatedly opening and closing his little hands, almost as if he's practicing a new kind of wave, which would be especially interesting as we have not been emphasizing waving or trying to teach him this basic way of greeting and farewell.

he has also started to explore the higher ranges of his vocal abilities... i believe it was either auntie katrina or uncle jonathan who compared him to a baby dolphin. within these high pitched babblings, he sometimes gets multiple tones in one breath; just the other day he gave ben an "i told you so!" melody. other vocal triumphs include repeatedly chanting "mum mum mum mum" which my mom believes he's intentionally calling out my name over and over.  he's also got Bob Loblaw's name down pat.  despite my mom's enthusiasm over milo "knowing" my name, he has yet to convince me that he understands how to use it, or what a name even is.

and for milo's last set of amazing new discoveries, he has begun the army crawl forward. backwards was getting to be no problem for him, pivots and turns he had figured out as well, but the forward function still wasn't fully operational. well he must have been practicing in his crib, because this morning milo surprised us with a very assertive forward scooch.

this next week my parents will be taking care of milo while i spend a girls' weekend with some of my dearest friends from college, and then ben comes out on monday just when they'll be leaving, so that he and i can get some vacation time together... i'm sure we'll see milo on monday, which will break up the 5 days and 4 nights that he'll be with my parents instead of me, but as his mother, that little worry bug starts to creep back in... what if he misses me? what if he's miserable? what if he won't sleep at night?

i know they'll take great care of him, and ben assured me that i'll probably have a harder time of it than milo will. this will be mine and milo's first night - let alone set of nights - apart from each other since he was born... 

but while i worry i should have started out smaller (maybe do one night apart and see how it goes and move forward from there), i know i won't mind when 5:30 rolls around and i'm still sleeping because i'm not the one with the monitor listening to him play in his crib and wondering if he'll go back to sleep for must 5 more minutes. (thanks mom.)

Monday, May 16, 2011

one, two, buckle my shoe...

well, the very next day after milo's first tooth sprouted, a second tooth began to emerge right next to it, and at this point has already started to cut through as well. on top of this, he's become quite the hungry, hungry hippo when it comes to those mushy solids - even green beans! carrots, peas, green beans, sweet potatoes, squash, he opens wide for all of it, sometimes chomping down repeatedly, like a mini-golf obstacle, and i have to practice my timing to make sure i get that spoon all the way in his mouth while it's wide open.

he's also trying to blow raspberries. so far this has consisted of accumulated drool gathering between his lips, and a little humming noise. sometimes his tongue tries to sneak through, but all it does is bring more drool with it.

and the pièce de résistence? today milo successfully scooched himself forward instead of backward! it was only a few knee shuffles, but it was in the right direction - our boy is officially figuring out how to crawl. we even got a repeat performance after ben got home so he could see it too.

pretty exciting stuff in the land of baby. :)

Monday, May 9, 2011

just another one for the books

awhile ago i bought a baby book so i could physically record all of milo's milestones, put in pictures, etc.... i've also thought of simply someday printing this blog out for him and binding it (or getting it bound at kinko's, or something like that...)

i still have the receipt in the book, though, just in case i change my mind and decide to return it. (at least i hope i've kept the receipt...)

the thing is, i think about it, and in the end, it's just a book, with pictures. i look at all our stuff, and i think, why do we hold on to this stuff? memories, i suppose. no one wants to be forgotten. but it seems very few people are remembered forever, and even within families, you could find an old photograph of someone (old as in, before digital cameras.... will milo even have a concept of film strips when he's older?), and it will probably be fun to look at for a minute or two, to feel the stiff paper, remember the warm sepia tones of pre-color photography, study the details contained within that tiny piece of paper: the expressions on their faces, the dated clothing and hair styles, the objects they chose to be photographed with...

now we live in the digital age, and everyone's a photographer, and we can all have our pictures taken, and no one will ever be forgotten, right? except that even when we find that photograph from way back when, and even if we could identify that in said photo is great aunt sally on my mother's father's cousin's wife's nephew's side (you get the idea...), i still didn't know her, nor do i know anything about her, and while i could probably find her birth and death records, whom she married (if she married), how many children she had, etc. etc., i still have no idea what kind of person she was. if she was kind, or impatient. if she sought out the best in other people or was cynical of everyone. if she wore her hair that way because her husband liked it, or because she liked it.

all this to say, milo is 7 months to the day, and he's cutting his first tooth. i can feel it. and see it. it's the bottom front tooth, i think a little to his right, but it's hard to tell. it feels sharp, and i can't imagine how it hurts, but i'm sure it does. overall, he's still a really happy baby, and while in the grand scheme of things, 10 generations from now, no one will really care that on may 9, 2011 my son milo was 7 months old and was cutting his first tooth, i figured i should still make note of it, just in case i decide to keep that baby book after all.

Monday, May 2, 2011

what's new, pusscat? whoa-whoa-whooooaaa!

milo has discovered the cat, and the cat doesn't seem too happy about it.

it probably doesn't help that the other night, ben was holding milo in a super-man pose as they chased the cat around the house, ben chuckling maniacally as milo laughed in pure delight at every lunge towards the furry feline. it was hard to tell what ben was enjoying more: getting milo to laugh or tormenting the poor cat (and i'm still not really sure, to be completely honest).

meanwhile, he'll probably grow up to believe that the cat's name is "be-gentle" as whenever the cat is nearby and milo is grabbing at her face, her tail, her ears, her fur, her many extra folds of skin, we help guide his fingers to avoid her eyes, her mouth, her butt, and we repeat the phrase over and over while helping him learn what it means to "be gentle" and giving the cat some much needed love and attention. the cat does seem to enjoy those moments with milo when we have him harnessed in our arms and under our control.

then there's the food. today he tried squash! he wasn't quite as enthusiastic about the orange-goop as he was about the pea-green-mush, but he also didn't refuse it as stubbornly as the rice-cereal-slop and the green-bean-gunk.

yesterday i didn't get around to feeding him any solids, and he woke up at 1 am angrier than a freshly-woken-previously-hibernating bear with its head stuck in a newly-established-void-of-any-honey, hornets' nest. probably hungrier too. despite my worries about introducing a middle-of-the-night-bottle after having weaned him from the habit so successfully, nothing was working to calm the little guy down, and i gave in. he guzzled down a whopping six and a half ounces.

lesson learned: make sure to feed milo at least one serving of solids, every. single. day.