Eighth month already

Our little guy is growing so fast. Here's a picture of him last week.

Dex is now 16 pounds. That's more than three times his birth weight!

The active little guy is trying to crawl. He gets on all fours and he rocks back and forth. I saw him take one step with one hand but he hasn't figured out that he needs to move his knees forward, too.

He insists on standing (supported by mommy or daddy). His favourite spot is the sofa for this.

When he's horizontal, he's very squirmy. Diaper changes are very interesting because of the rolling. Speaking of horizontal, his favourite sleeping position is now on his front with his bum raised a bit. Very sweet.

He babbles away, mostly nonsense but once in a while my fertile imagination catches a "mama" or "dada." At one point, I swear he said "peek-a-boo."

He smiles a lot and he has the most infectious laugh. It's impossible to be tired or be in a bad mood when he squeals with delight. The backs of his chubby thighs are very ticklish. He giggles when I try to massage him there. His ribs are also very ticklish and I get my first giggle in the morning when I attack him and tell him I want to nibble baby ribs for breakfast.

He is very curious. When he looks at objects, he studies them ever so carefully. He seems especially fascinated by clasps and other restraining devices such as the high chair straps, car seat straps, the velcro fasteners on his swing, my bra clasps.

He's getting more hair and the stuff coming in is darker. His eyes are also getting a little darker, but there's still blue in them. The flat side of his head is rounding out nicely, or at least it's squaring up nicely (he has a square head like daddy).

He's sleeping a bit longer these days. Or at least, he does when the teeth are not cutting. He now has six teeth!

More teeth

Can you believe it? Two more front teeth coming up. No wonder he's been a little cranky. Must be tough being a baby and going through this much change so quickly. Not having stronger verbal skills to articulate pain and discomfort must also suck big time. Errr... let me rephrase. He's definitely sucking all the time. Literally, I mean.

Little piglet eats rabbit food

He likes carrots!

Our little guy, born in the year of the Golden Pig under the Chinese horoscope, just started his third vegetable today. They say that once he's eating at least three vegetables that we can start introducing fruit. That will be the next gastronomic adventure!

Peas please

Since the sweet potato was such a big hit and since we have surpassed the obligatory five-day wait with no adverse reactions (health professionals recommend that we introduce one vegetable at a time so that we can observe the baby for any allergic reactions), it was time to move on.

I would normally not introduce a new thing to Dexter's diet unless I have the car here (just in case he does react and I have to rush to emerg), but I decided that introducing peas to Dexter's diet is safe enough. I mean, who's allergic to peas, right?

Predictably, the event was unremarkable. Dexter was not as enthusiastic with the peas as with the sweet potato. Other than indifference, no reaction at all. However, the green splatter on the walls, the floor, his high chair, his clothes, and my right shoulder makes for an interesting clean up.

We have a set

The second tooth poked through last night. That explains why the boy woke up at 2:30 am and did not want to go back to bed. I had to resort to my top secret magic maneuver: I brought him to bed and gave him the breast. He finally fell asleep again at 5:30 am. He woke up at 9:30 am to haggard-looking parents. I don't think I should be operating any heavy machinery today, not even a vacuum cleaner.

Thank you

One more thing to be thankful for: a jagged little tooth that is now visible to the eye and palpable with either a finger or other body parts that a breastfeeding mother would not care to mention here.

Yes! After another difficult night, we have a breakthrough. I took the 3 to 4 am shift, and Jon took the 4 to 5 am shift to comfort an inconsolable baby. Apparently, he had reason to be uncomfortable; Dexter's first tooth has broken through the gums. It's the right hand lower incisor. I bet the other one to match it on the left side is ready to make an appearance this week as well.

We have lots to be thankful for this year. Our no-longer-toothless little bundle of joy is just one of the many. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Speaking of science

We interrupted our usual language arts and phys ed classes yesterday (read: singing ABCs and rolling on the floor) with a cognitive and physical science lesson.

We heard all about gravity and about the concept of object permanence (read: he's dropping things on the floor and looking for them). It was very cute. I had him on my lap and he was holding a teething toy. At first, he seemed a little conflicted between the desire to stick the toy in his mouth, his usual way of experiencing the world, and this compulsion to drop it on the floor to hear that satisfying soft thud. I guess curiosity, coupled with his still developing fine motor adeptness, ended up making the decision for him -- so drop the toy he did!

And that's the game we played. Over and over again. He'd look at me then drop the toy. He'd bend down to see where the toy landed and I would pick it up, give it my quick-blow-and-rub-it-briskly-on-my-jeans-a-few-times sanitizing technique, then hand it back. It was fun the first 50 times or so, but then to save Mommy's sanity, we switched topics to learn an important life lesson: how to deal with the loss of a toy once it "accidentally" disappears for real.

Update on my science project

Significant increase in volume but no discernible colour change on the output side. Too bad. I was actually looking forward to the flourescent orange stuff coming out.

My science project

Feeding time is going to get even more interesting.

Today, Dex gladly accepted some yummy orange organic sweet potato. He was a little surprised at the new taste sensation at first, but he kept sucking that spoon and kept asking for more until he finished the teeny ungenerous teaspoon of the stuff.

Officially, the first vegetable he tried was carrot. I whipped up a homemade version from the organic carrots I got from the farmer's market a couple of weeks ago. That experiment was not well received. I believe he said "bleaah." I'm not sure that counts as a first word, since I'm not sure that is actually a word (good word if it was one -- must consult the Scrabble dictionary later).

In any case, this morning's feed was considered a success, judging by the ratio of sweet potato ingested versus sweet potato on his bib and/or the walls.

Now, I wait with bated breath to see if the output portion of this experiment is equally interesting.