feets and rollings

Some stream-of-consciousness reporting on more milestones this week...Leo is now sleeping through the night if you take the definition that he eats at roughly 6pm and again at 5:30 or 6am. He still wakes up in between some nights, but he no longer needs the 10/11pm bottle. Woohoo.

And...today he rolled over twice. Mama and papa both saw it, so we are counting these as the first even though he did it once for Mama yesterday. He needs a lot of coaxing and it doesn't come easily, but soon he'll be a rolling dervish. Today he also discovered his feet. Speaking of feet, his are almost to the end of the car seat now. !!! This photo is from today, after the bath.



The ladies at daycare think he might be teething...we'll keep you posted. We're going to have to get a high chair soon because he is getting the hang of rice cereal, although he is not in love with it. He likes sitting at the big table when we are eating. Here's Leo reading the public television schedule for the month, picking out which documentaries he'd like to watch.


And here he is concentrating on his book:


He also had his first piggyback ride this week and adored it. It's hard to tell who is having more fun here, Leo or Jeff.

Tomorrow Leo is also making his second trip to one of Duke's infant perception labs. A few weeks ago we took him to the lab that is studying what infants can see and perceive using a really cool monitor/camera/software setup. Tomorrow is the language lab where they will play different languages to see if he can tell that they are different. He's an infant scientist!

Tomorrow night mama and papa are going on a date and our friend Heidi is going to watch Leo. We're all very excited about this!

Five months old

Dear Leo,

Today you are five months old (already!) Not a lot of major developments to report, by some subtle progressions have been made. You can now purposefully grasp things in your hands and pass them from hand to hand. You can take your pacifier out and put it in again with minimal difficultly. You do like to play with it, turning it this way and that in your hands, trying to chew on it from various angles, before plopping it in your mouth with a satisfied smack.

You are enjoying tummy time more and more and can really hold your whole chest up with your arms. You've almost figured out that turning over will be much easier from this position than from on your back, but you're not in any hurry to get there (mama is a bit relieved by this, she's not ready for the flipping-->crawling progression yet). If we sit you up you can stay up for about 30 seconds before you topple over, which you usually find to be great fun.

You've decided that if you can get out of taking a nap you will--since naps are for babies and you're a big boy. You'd rather play and be with mama and papa until you're so tired you can't see straight (doesn't affect your ability to whine about it though). You are doing pretty well at sleeping at night--we're experimenting with cutting down on the 10pm bottle to see if we can eliminate it all together. But you often still wake up one or two times, but if we put your pacifier back in you go right back to sleep. Why oh why does the loss of pacifier bother you some nights and not at all others?! I'd worry that we were spoiling you by putting it back in, but since you are able to sleep without it we know you have the ability to get yourself back to sleep.

You've discovered the joy of bathtime with ducky, and would like to stay and splash with him until the water is cold.

You tried rice cereal for the first time yesterday and did not like it at all thank you very much. Grandma Marge laughed when I recounted the story to her--apparently your mama was not too thrilled with rice cereal either. Well who could blame us, it's hardly cereal at all! But, eventually you will want more than formula, and when you do we'll be ready. More than ready actually, since you are still a champion spitter.

We've decided that you would medal in the baby olympics (or the Babylympics as papa calls them) if the categories were something like 'precision drooling' and 'volume spitting.' One night mama had to change her clothes twice after you decorated her profusely with formula. Hopefully the transition to solid food will at least be messy in a different way.

You have discovered the toy bugs hanging from
the handle of your car seat. You grab them and pull hard, examining them intently. You play with each of your toys intently, especially the ones that crinkle or rattle. You don't show any inclination to have a security toy/blanket yet--your stuffed lion is more fun to chew on than hug in your estimation, same thing goes for burp cloths. You also like to chew on mama and papa's fingers and our shoulders. And you like to examine and chew on your own hands. You haven't discovered your feet yet though.

Keep on doing what you are doing, we love you!

Mama (and Papa)

Leos (or is that Leoes?)

(Maybe Dr. Sills can tell me what the plural of Leo is supposed to be?)

Tonight Leo met the third Leo he's known in his short life. The first was another baby at one of the daycares we looked at (not the one in which he's enrolled), the second was a 40-something year old man we met at the party for Rick and Marnie, and this third Leo was a 30-something year old man at our neighborhood association meeting. For a name that is not all that common any more, I find it amusing that there are four Leos who are in three different age brackets who have met in the last two months.

beards and feets

Two other quick observations, before I forget...

Lately you have been fascinated with your papa's beard. If he is holding you and you are facing him you often reach up to stroke his beard. It's quite sweet actually. (Just wait until you start grabbing things, then it won't be so cute.)

Also, you have been cleverly using your feet to retrieve toys that have fallen further down in your chair than your hands can reach. I'm sure it's normal development, but it makes me think you have pretty good problem solving skills (not to mention motor control!).

sleepings and stinky babies

Dearest Leo has slept through the night the last two nights in a row--count them, two. This also means he slept through his bath, since I didn't want to give him one at 10pm when we woke him for his last bottle, so he's a little stinky. But, he slept! He's been really crabby in the evenings though--not enough daytime naps and so he's overtired and doesn't want to sleep, in case he misses something cool. (I think) the only reason we got him to fall asleep the last two nights is because we had to go on errands (car swapping) that required both Jeff and I, so we had to take Leo in the car with us. He almost always falls asleep in the car, but we never had to use this trick even when he was really little. Oh well, I guess I'll take cranky for now if it means he'll sleep through the night.

raspberry delight

One day on the way home from daycare last week Leo started blowing raspberries, followed by smacking his lips. It sounds like *thppbbt* *smack* *thppbbt* *smack*, etc. It was really funny.

Yesterday we went for our first walk of the spring, with him facing outward in the baby carrier for the first time. He really enjoyed taking in all the sights--especially all of the birds congregating in the park. Leo also sat outside with me while I raked leaves for awhile.

This weekend is proving to be much like last--he's really happy, but doesn't want to take naps, and then gets really crabby when we make him go to sleep.

He may also be picking up on the stress that mama and papa are feeling--we found out that we need to have a major repair done to our airhandling system--at least $1300, possibly $2500 if we need to replace the whole thing. And then the oil light on J's car came on Thursday and wouldn't go out--he was at the repair shop all morning
yesterday and they a) told us we should think about getting a new car, and b) didn't end up fixing the problem even though they said they did. Boy was J mad when he got home! We also need to have the structural engineer come out and take a look at the mega cracks in the walls and uneven doorframes...that's probably going to result in not-inexpensive foundation reinforcements. Sigh. I guess Leo doesn't need to go to college...

Of gurgles and nappings and smiles

Leo is just full of smiles these days. All I have to do is wiggle my eyebrows at him and he grins. What a funny boy! He's also incorporating more consonant sounds in his cooing--right now lots of g's. The more he gurgles the more he drools. Mmmm, damp, my favorite condition.

Friday night he at at about 6pm, was up for a few more hours for a bath, etc. and was in bed by 8:30pm. And he slept until 6am without a single peep. Not one. We thought he'd wake us up for his last bottle around 10:30pm or 11pm as usual and we were so tired we were in bed by 9:30pm (insted of Jeff staying up to feed him). But he slept all the way through, even though he was a bottle short for the day. So we took the opportunity to compress his feedings so that his last bottle is now at about 8 or 9pm and this seemed to work this weekend--he didn't need to eat until morning. Eventually we can move that last bottle even earlier.

Of course, he didn't sleep straight through Saturday or Sunday night--he was up for diaper changes and what not. I think it had a lot to do with the fact that the house was cold. He also didn't' want to nap on Sunday--he took a handful of shorter naps, but not the two hour+ naps he's been taking at daycare.

It was a busy weekend--housework, yardwork, laundry, meal planning and groceries, a trip to the library for more Leo-friendly books, and a Sunday night rehearsal in Raleigh for me for a chamber music gig that I'm doing the next two weekends. And of course Jeff graded, graded, and graded some more. The life of a teacher. But, interspersed with all of that was play time with Leo, and when you are covered in baby drool and the little one is smiling at you, not much could make it better.