Whole New Baby
In Henry's five-month post, I wrote that he didn't seem like he had changed very much in the preceding month. The last two weeks made up for that quiet month. All of a sudden it seems like he entered a whole new phase of babyhood.
First of all, he finished the process of unfurling. His default pose is now sprawling and open, rather than turned in and curling. His posture is more upright and his movements are more deliberate. When he holds a toy in his hand, he now rotates it around and twists it and angles it just so, rather than indiscriminately mashing it into his face.
Henry's also more squirmy than roly-poly now. He lunges after the things he wants and likes to grab at his bottle or spoon while we're feeding him. It's much tougher to change him because he can flip over in no time flat, even on the changing pad that's contoured specifically to prevent that sort of nonsense. If he hears Karl's voice or Izzy's nails on the floor outside the bedroom while he's nursing, he flings himself backwards and arches upside down over my lap to look for them.
He has a sense of humor and has great big laughs for our antics. Izzy running around crazy, Karl tossing him up in the air, and anyone talking silly in a super high-pitched voice are currently hilarious.
Finally, most adorable and terrifying of all, he is thisclose to crawling. Just in the last three days he has figured out a sort of inchworm mode of transit in which he shimmies his little butt up in the air then pulls his upper body forward with his elbows. He can now use some combination of rolling and inchworming to reach something he wants clear across a room. Yesterday morning I laid him down on the floor in his room while I went to the bathroom to put on my makeup. My very sophisticated work face takes a whole, oh, sixty seconds to apply, and by the time I came back, Henry was halfway across the room inspecting the mechanics of the glider. For some reason, this new-found volitional movement is hitting me hard. Now there's a tiny little slice of his desires that he doesn't need me (or anyone else) to satisfy. He looks so proud when he gets to the toy all by himself, and I'm proud of his independence too. But pretty soon he's going to go away to college and never call me.
I think he spent the last few months taking it all in and figuring things out. Now he's ready to grab the rattly purple moose of life by the horns and drool all over it.
First of all, he finished the process of unfurling. His default pose is now sprawling and open, rather than turned in and curling. His posture is more upright and his movements are more deliberate. When he holds a toy in his hand, he now rotates it around and twists it and angles it just so, rather than indiscriminately mashing it into his face.
Henry's also more squirmy than roly-poly now. He lunges after the things he wants and likes to grab at his bottle or spoon while we're feeding him. It's much tougher to change him because he can flip over in no time flat, even on the changing pad that's contoured specifically to prevent that sort of nonsense. If he hears Karl's voice or Izzy's nails on the floor outside the bedroom while he's nursing, he flings himself backwards and arches upside down over my lap to look for them.
He has a sense of humor and has great big laughs for our antics. Izzy running around crazy, Karl tossing him up in the air, and anyone talking silly in a super high-pitched voice are currently hilarious.
Finally, most adorable and terrifying of all, he is thisclose to crawling. Just in the last three days he has figured out a sort of inchworm mode of transit in which he shimmies his little butt up in the air then pulls his upper body forward with his elbows. He can now use some combination of rolling and inchworming to reach something he wants clear across a room. Yesterday morning I laid him down on the floor in his room while I went to the bathroom to put on my makeup. My very sophisticated work face takes a whole, oh, sixty seconds to apply, and by the time I came back, Henry was halfway across the room inspecting the mechanics of the glider. For some reason, this new-found volitional movement is hitting me hard. Now there's a tiny little slice of his desires that he doesn't need me (or anyone else) to satisfy. He looks so proud when he gets to the toy all by himself, and I'm proud of his independence too. But pretty soon he's going to go away to college and never call me.
I think he spent the last few months taking it all in and figuring things out. Now he's ready to grab the rattly purple moose of life by the horns and drool all over it.
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| Our very busy guy. |
Or worse than going away to college and never calling, he'll move halfway across the country and you'll only get to see him twice a year.
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