10 months

I have a new nephew! This means that PB had only 10 months to be the new grandchild for my parents. Now my brother's son is the newbie, and PB has to prepare to teach his cousin the ways of the world.
 

Weight: I'm presuming around 24 pounds. Definitely still hefty.

Length: No appointment this month, so I'm not sure.

What he's eating: These days, PB generally nurses in the morning (every other night or so, he's up around 5am to nurse and then go back to sleep. Otherwise he's up around when my alarm goes off - 6:30 or so - for the day), has breakfast with us, has some milk before his morning nap, eats lunch with whoever is around, has milk again before his afternoon nap, has another bottle around 4:30, eats dinner with us and then nurses before bed at night. His solid meals are becoming more complete, but he's definitely still getting much of his nutrition from milk.

Except for avoiding things made with nuts and honey (ahem - my extended in-laws must have missed ALL the memos, as they fed my child Honey Nut Cheerios when we were all on vacation together. Fortunately he neither had an allergic reaction nor contracted botulism but I was pretty pissed), we're mostly just feeding him whatever we're eating, or modified versions of the same. Except for tuna salad, he hasn't acted like there's any food he won't eat. (And he even ate that, just not much of it). 

Physical skills: He's downright graceful with getting himself up to a standing position, and more and more frequently he will forget himself: holding a book or a toy while he's standing, not supporting himself on anything. There have been a couple of instances when he's half-stumbled-half-stepped from the chair to the couch in our living room. He also likes to bop up and down to music, which I'm sure is not just adorable (though it truly is) but is also making his legs even stronger.

Besides working on those pre-walking skills, he's just getting better at getting in to EVERYTHING. I bought a pack of cabinet door locks and really need to get them installed, because opening cabinet doors and removing all the contents is PB's idea of a party.

He crawls very quickly. One of our new favorite games is chasing each other around the couch. Sometimes PB and I just stake out on opposite ends of the couch, giggling uncontrollably while we're hiding from each other. Then one of us hears the other one's giggles getting closer, and the chase is on! I have had evenings recently when my knees were practically raw after crawling around the couch so many times. PB must have kevlar in his knees or something.

Teeth: Seven... or eight? On of his eyeteeth is definitely through. I haven't made visual confirmation of the other one, but I suspect it's there.

Favorite toys: A week ago, there was a town-wide yard sale in the suburb next to ours, and I found the raddest Caterpillar front-loader toy for $3: it's huge and yellow and has giant wheels, and seemed like it had hardly been played with. PB loves it. When we first put it out for him, he lit up and zoomed right over to it.
 
Verbal skills: He babbles a lot, and often he seems to just be playing with the sound of his voice. One day recently I was walking down the stairs and he was playing in the living room, standing up in front of the couch, and he looked up at me and said, "MOM-EE". Clear as day. DH and I both repeated it back to him: "Did you say 'mommy?' " But I'm still pretty sure he's not actually connecting that word with me. I do think he connects some sounds with us: for a few months he has said "ma-ma-ma-ma" when he's hungry, and he says "dadadada" around DH at times.

It makes me wonder: how do people distinguish a kid's actual first word? Because it's clear to me that he's experimenting with syllables and sounds, and taking in to account when we reinforce or repeat certain sounds to him. So eventually "dadadada" will work itself in to "daddy", but I think it's going to be hard to pinpoint the moment when those sounds become a word for him. It's all a lot more gradual than I expected it to be.  
  
Social skills: He's started doing some direct imitation: this past weekend, DH and I were both drinking Cokes out of bottles. I took a sip of mine and made a refreshed "aaah" sound afterward. Then DH did the same thing. PB watched us with interest, so we both did it again. Then he turned to me and went "hhhaaahhh". It was exceptionally cute. The three of us spent the rest of the afternoon all sounding very refreshed at each other.

This past Sunday, PB had breakfast with his grandparents and dinner with his great-grandparents, so there were two meals in the same day when he had an audience of 4. He becomes a complete jibber-jabber box when there is conversation around the dinner table. He hams it up a lot more when there are other people besides his boring parents around: babbling, pretending (briefly) to be shy, holding up pieces of food, clapping... it's quite the show.

Sleep: Overall, PB's sleep has been pretty good. He's had his first real cold for the past 5 days or so, and there were a couple of nights of coughing himself awake and wanting to nurse more than usual, but it was all pretty understandable. I think he's over the worst of the cold now, and is just gunky, so he's mostly been sleeping 7:30pm to 6:30ish am, with two naps during the day.

Oh yeah, the cold:  I always used to think little kids with snotty noses are gross: like, I'd get a little bile-in-the-back-of-the-throat thing when I saw a super-snotted kid. Now I'm basically unfazed by it, and am all about cleaning up that nose. PB is not thrilled about my enthusiasm. 

9 months

PB had his 9-month doctor appointment on Tuesday, and he's huge. He's also awesome. 
 
Weight: 23 pounds, 11 ounces - 95th percentile

Length: 29.5 inches - 90th percentile. He's also in the 95th percentile for head size.

What he's eating: Lots of solids! We're steadily moving toward a life where PB can just eat what we're eating, with minor modifications - no cow's milk, honey or nut things yet, and limited salt. But each day the solids are getting easier, it seems. We just try to give him a variety of colors and generally some protein, some carbs and lots of fruit and veggies.

Acidic things bother him a little bit - I was feeding him a bunch of pineapple (and eating some myself) and then PB was spitting up a lot, all the sudden. DH connected those dots.This makes sense - I haven't been drinking orange juice because he spit up all the time when he was new if I'd have citrus. So I think we need to go easy on the pineapple, too.

He is also trying to figure out how to drink from a cup - especially with his stacking cups in the bath tub. I'm pretty sure he's chugged some bath water at this point. Parenting win. I just picked up a couple of straw cups (rated for kids 12-months-plus, but he'll be there soon enough) so we'll see if he likes those.

We're still nursing, too. He either nurses or has a bottle 5-6 times in 24 hours.

Physical skills: Lightning-fast crawling, cruising along furniture and baby gates, and wiggling impossibly during diaper changes. This kid is on the move. His pincer grasp is very fine - he can easily pluck an individual pea off the high chair tray and put it in his mouth - and he enjoys taking apart his big Mega Blocks if we put them together.

Also, we'd been in the new house for less than 2 weeks when he figured out how to climb stairs and proceeded to climb a whole flight (with DH spotting him) on June 26. DH bought one of those baby corrals the next day.

Teeth: SIX. Four of his top teeth came in over the past month. Poor dude had a couple of rough nights, and I dosed him with Tylenol on two different midnights when he was clearly suffering. He's such a trooper... I hate how painful it is for him. We seem to be in a teething pause now, for which I'm thankful.

Favorite toys: This is typical: I was trying to tidy up the baby corral area in the family room, and we had these stackable plastic drawers that I've had since college that have moved with me many times. They didn't have an assigned place, so I put all the random toys in one drawer and the Mega Blocks in another and stacked them up in the corral area one night. The next morning, PB behaved like it was a Christmas Miracle in July, and proceeded to dismantle the entire set of drawers, including flipping over the Mega Blocks drawer so the blocks went everywhere. This is now one of his daily projects: we put everything together overnight, and he takes it all apart in the morning. I feel like the Drawer Fairy or something.

Verbal skills: He's babbling all the time, still a lot of "mamamama", and more of a variety of vowel sounds. 
 
Social skills: He has learned how to clap, and if one of us says "yay!" and claps our hands, he busts out a huge smile and claps, too. He also claps when I come home from work in the evening sometimes. This makes my heart explode.

We visited our good friends Bro and the Speaker and their little guy, who is 5 months old, last week. PB had a lot of interaction with the other baby and Bro's three pets: two cats and a dog. DH and I are brokenhearted cat people, of course, so we were anxious to see how PB did with the cats. Happily, he LOVED them. When he saw Layla, a tuxedo kitty, he immediately started laughing with excitement. I almost had to go elsewhere and cry because dear departed Corina was a tuxedo kitty and now I'm convinced he would have loved her as much as we did.

Bro's pets are really calm and used to a baby - though not one who's quite as mobile as ours - so they were good for him to be around. Their big sweet golden retriever gave him lots of licks on the face, which startled him sometimes, but he seemed to like it.

Overall, he's still pretty good with strangers. If we're in a store or something and a random person walks up and talks to him, he's generally pretty quick to smile.


Sleep: A couple of weeks ago I decided to try "dream feeding" - nursing him when he's basically still asleep around 10:30 or so before I go to bed. And since I've been doing that (with the exception of a couple of rough teething nights) he's been sleeping through the night: 7:30ish pm to 6:30ish am. Naps are getting fairly consistent: a morning nap of about an hour around 9:30, and a longer afternoon nap in the 1:30-2:00 range.

I may regret typing it in public, but I'm less tired these days. I am also, overall, less stressed at the moment, which I think helps with everything. A few weeks ago I had a low-grade fever for several days, and it wasn't until day 3 that I actually realized I was sick and not just exhausted. This kind of scared me. DH and I have been working on some medium-term plans to make sure we don't let ourselves get that overstressed (um, starting with not moving twice and having a baby all within 10 months - that's a poor plan). 

8 months

Over the last month, we moved. All our stuff is at the new house and we technically live in it, but it's going to be a long while before I feel settled. For the most part, PB handled the transition like a champ, and he had no difficulty settling in to his new room and getting down to the business of exploring all the new space.

Also, the new house has central air, just in time for the hottest June around these parts in 40 years. I keep wavering between being grateful and wondering if we're going to raise a spoiled kid who can't live without central air. (I have this concern because I have never lived in a building with central air before and thus presume people who grow up with it are spoiled. This may not be accurate.)


Weight: 22.4 pounds, according to the not-super-accurate scale at home.

Length: tall. His next appointment will be at 9 months so we'll see how tall then.

What he's eating: I'll admit that there were a few days during the move (which was a two-week-plus project) when PB ate cheerios, puffs and... that's about it. Now that we're settling in, we're being more intentional about the solids, and trying to make sure he gets a bit of protein (so far he's had chicken and turkey and really liked both) and some fruits and veggies. I picked up a pint of sugar snap peas at a farmer's market last week, and he couldn't get enough of them - we spent a pleasant late afternoon sitting on the deck, PB in my lap while I snapped the peas open and handed them to him, one by one. The advantage of this baby-led weaning we're doing is that, at a bit over 7 months old, his pincer grasp is so developed he can pick a pea out of my palm and pop it in his mouth, no trouble. It makes eating at outdoor events really simple.

This month he also tried Cheerios for the first through zillionth time, cornbread, some bagel, and a blueberry pancake. He ate the ENTIRE normal-sized pancake!


He's still nursing, too, of course. For a few days I was worried that, thanks to the stress of moving, thrush was making a return, as the familiar burn/pain was hitting me on the left side. I still had some APNO on hand and used that after each feeding for a while and it seems to be clearing up, thankfully.


We're trying to get more protein in to him so he's not just eating carbs all the time, so I think we're going to try yogurt soon and see how that goes, and add some beans to the mix. Most of his solid food protein has been from chicken or turkey so far. 

Physical skills: PB is pulling up on everything and likes to spend his time crawling around, finding places he can stand up. He's getting way more confident with standing: often he'll be holding a toy or reaching for something with one hand while supporting himself with the other - or he'll hold on with two hands and make a march-in-place step. Yikes! This makes for exciting times and the occasional tumble and head bonk, though 9 times out of 10 he catches himself and manages to plop on to his well-padded behind.

Despite his obvious trajectory toward walking, his crawling skills have continued to improve, too. He is FAST. It's fun to watch how quickly he can get himself across the room if he sees something (usually sharp or electrical) he wants to play with. 

Teeth: Technically, there are still only two. Still. After another MONTH of extreme drooling, constant chewing, and now waking up twice a night again to nurse away what I suspect is gum pain, we have... nothing. DH and I have both noticed a bump in the upper front gums, so I'm presuming that's the culprit. But at the rate it's going I think this tooth will never break through. PB's overall mood has still been happy, though - I think he just spends all day chewing so he doesn't feel too bad.

Favorite toys: Everything! We've been moving and the house is chaos. Fun toys have included a hand-me-down tea kettle, various cardboard boxes, and anything which will make noise when drummed upon.

Verbal skills: Still a lot of "mamamama" and "bababa", but we're seeing more and more variety in PB's tone of voice. Lately he's been speaking in this sweet, happy, higher pitched voice. I think it's his coversational tone. It's hard to convey how completely adorable it is. I had him in our bedroom this past weekend while I was trying to sort out our clothes in to the closet. PB was pulling skirts down from hangers and chattering away while he explored the space. It was way too cute to be mad at.

Also, this is more of an aural skill, I suppose, but in his bath each night I try to clean his teeth with a washcloth, as recommended by our pediatrician. PB now understands me when I say "let's clean your teeth!"  He thinks it's a fun thing to do, so he grins and tries to chomp the washcloth when I say it now. I'm trying to be better about repeating words and phrases when I'm doing things with him, so he'll understand more things like this, but so far that's the only one I've noticed.

Social skills: This past month featured a few social situations that were a  lot of fun. PB got to spend a couple of the moving days with his great aunt, who also babysits his 1-year-old cousin. I'll call his cousin Blanche. PB loves Blanche like... like bees loves flowers? I don't know, he just thinks she is the greatest. Since they're only 5 months apart they make good playmates. A big part of the reason we moved was so PB could be closer to the other kids in the family, so this development has been gratifying for us to see.

I also went to a picnic wedding reception, just me and PB because DH was working on moving stuff, and PB was such a charmer even though he'd never met anyone there before. It helped that the groom, like DH, has a sizeable beard. I think that put PB at ease.

That is one really cute thing: PB loves facial hair, so any man with a beard is automatically getting it tugged - sometimes HARD - when he's close enough.

Sleep: This has been on-again, off-again, and I blame the dang teeth. The other night he was awake at 1am and 4am. Both times he nursed and went right back to sleep, and then he slept until almost 7, which was great, but I am tired. My completely made-up theory is that his gums just start to ache after a few hours of not-chewing when he's asleep.

I'm also thinking the phrase "I am tired" is just going to be in all these updates. Tired and happy, at least.

So long, DOMA?

Let's hope. This looks like some progress from the courts: Federal Appeals Court Calls Defense of Marriage Act Unconstitutional

I don't know if it's the nitty-gritty work DH and I have been doing while we raise an ever-more-mobile tyke and tackle buying a house together, or if it's that our recent method of unwinding at the end of the day has been to catch reruns of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" on Netflix (Oh, Thom. Can you please come decorate my house for me?), but I've been feeling really impatient about this issue lately.

If people want to get married, let 'em. End of story. Let's focus our energy on some actual problems.

7 months

Weight: Around 21 pounds, according to the bathroom scale.

Length: we haven't measured, but he's noticeably taller recently.

What he's eating: Still mostly breastmilk, but he eats solids twice a day most days. We're trying to keep up variety, but his solid diet is heavy on fruit these days. Peaches were recently introduced, and he loved them. I've also been making homemade applesauce with some cinnamon, and that's a hit. He likes working with a spoon: I'll steer the spoon of applesauce toward his mouth, and he'll grab the handle of the spoon and jam it the rest of the way in to his mouth. Then he likes to chew on the spoon for a moment, or use it as a baton/gavel, then attempt to fling it to the ground if the attending parent isn't fast enough.

We have survived a nursing strike, which was a weird experience. For 5-6 days, he just wouldn't nurse. He'd clearly be hungry, and a few times when I tried to nurse him, he'd get as far as almost latching on, and then he'd just lean back and cry. So for a few days there it was exclusive pumping/bottles. I read somewhere to give a small bottle before an attempted nursing session, and to try to nurse when the kid is sleepy, so at bedtime the last few nights of the strike I'd been giving PB 3 ounces or so in a bottle, and then introducing the breast, which worked. Then one morning on a whim I decided to see if he would nurse normally, and to my surprise he did. After another couple of days, the strike mostly fizzled out. That was weird.

But one theory about nursing strikes is that they happen when the baby is reaching some kind of milestone, and he's been going gangbusters on the...

Physical skills. Last month he was "so close" to crawling, and working on sitting up. Now he can:

 a)  sit up for as long as he wants
 b)  crawl - this is now old news for him
 c)  about 1.5 weeks ago he started pulling up on his knees, and
 d)  a few days ago he began pulling up on to his feet.

He spends probably a couple of hours a day on his feet now: he just crawls around to different stuff (the couch, the coffee table, a skirt if I'm ever wearing one, and now the boxes that are starting to pile up) to pull himself up. He's so long he can reach anything that's on the couch now, too. We're so close to closing on this new house, and we could really use the space and the freedom to fully babyproof a place!  

Teeth: Still holding steady at 2, but we're expecting more any day now: PB is always drooling and chewing, and sometimes he seems to be feeling around on his upper gums with his finger. We both keep checking around in there for signs of new chompers, but no evidence yet. The first two popped up quickly after months of chewing and drooling, so I think they just take their time to surface.

Favorite toys: His board books (we stack them up all neat at night, and the first thing he does in the morning is crawl over and pull them all down), especially "That's Not My Bear", the couch (for pulling himself up), the power cord on the laptop and anything else he's not supposed to have. Oh, and most of the other things recently mentioned.

Verbal skills: Still plenty of "mamama" and "bababa", more frequent babbling, especially when he's starting to get a little tired, and plenty of laughing. Sometimes (like when I blow air at the mobile over his changing table and make it move while we're relaxing in the chair in his room) he says, "ooooh", which is (shocker) really cute. He's also getting LOUD - sometimes the babbling is VERY SHOUTY. But it's mostly happy, so that's cool.

Social skills: Still pretty good, though he's shown some signs of stranger anxiety in public situations recently. He's also getting smart about attention: he's starting to do that thing kids do wherein he falls down or bonks his head and then gauges the reaction of the adults around him before he starts crying. Unless I'm in the room, then he just howls. And then I pick him up, because I'm a total sucker.

Sleep: Looking back at the 6-month mark, I'm surprised at how used to new patterns I get. He's sleeping through the night every night now: down for bed by 7:30pm, waking up around 6:15am.

This is awesome, and I'm used to this... but I'm really tired. When he was waking up at 4am, I'd go nurse him in his dark room and then we'd all go back to sleep. Now that he's up FOR THE DAY at 6ish every morning, relentlessly, I realize I'm just not getting enough sleep. Yes, I'm pretty sure I'm more sleep-deprived now that our kid is sleeping through the night than I was when he wasn't. Of course, there is other stuff going on (all the last-minute house crap, packing for our second move in less than a year, my busiest week of the year at work last week) but I can never sleep in late in the morning (and "late" now is 7am). Ever. Again. For, like, what? 8 years or something? Sigh. And I can't just bring him to bed right when he wakes up, because he's really awake, ready to crawl and climb and babble and shriek, and not even all that hungry right away so he won't snuggle and nurse or anything, he wants to move.

I just re-read the last few sentences, and it reads something like "ugh, my baby is so happy and healthy... what a pain!" And I really don't want to be that person. I'm just tired. Very happy and grateful for our unbelievably sweet baby, and tired. I understand this is pretty normal for parents.

6 months

SIX MONTHS? Half a year? That was fast. And PB decided to get a lot accomplished in the past month. Meanwhile, everything's still crazy (good crazy! Very good crazy!) with job/housing stuff, so I am yet again late with this update. But here it is. He had a doctor's appointment on the day he hit the six-month mark, so I have real stats! 

Weight: 19lb, 9oz. (90th percentile)


Length: 27.5 inches (90th percentile)

Head circumference: I never pay attention to the actual numbers, but he's also in the 90th percentile here.

What he's eating: He started solids! On the morning of April 2, I was sitting with PB on my lap while I ate breakfast, which included a banana. PB was reaching like crazy for the fruit, so I broke off a small piece and held it in front of him. He nabbed it and popped it in his mouth immediately. I couldn't really see his face, but DH said he looked very thoughtful for a moment. He s-l-o-w-l-y chewed it, and we kept expecting him to spit it out, but nope!

Since then he has tried oatmeal, pears, pineapple, green beans, a crust of bread, and red bell pepper. We're doing this Baby-Led-Weaning style: we put food in front of him (the fruits and veggies are cut up in to easy-to-grab stick shapes) and let him play with it, basically. Sometimes it winds up in his mouth. So far he seems to like everything he's tried.

All his actual nutrition is still coming from breastmilk. The solids, at this point, are basically a fun toy, and we've been getting him used to sitting in his high chair with us when we're eating breakfast. That's given us a fun preview to family meals in the future.

Physical skills: He is SO CLOSE to crawling. He now rocks on his hands and knees all the time. Even without formal crawling skills, he's really getting around: he'll get himself across the living room in under 2 minutes, especially if something dangerous/electrical is in his line of sight. This is correlating with an increased difficulty in the diaper-change department, because now about half the time I try to change him, he flips over on his tummy and starts trying to make quick with the getaway. It's becoming a wrestling match. 

NEW CATEGORY! Teeth!: He has two teeth now! April 2 was a big day - first the banana, then DH called me at work that afternoon and said he felt a tooth coming through. Over the next few days, we started to be able to see them. PB handled them pretty well - he mostly kept chawing on everything. There was one night when he woke up abruptly, screaming (very out of character for him), and looking back we think that might have been the night when they actually cut through his gums. It was a bit scary for me, as he generally just makes enough noise to alert us that he's awake, but he was really hollering, even after I picked him up. He didn't really calm down until he was nursing. But I think that was because his gums hurt.

As DH has pointed out, we're spoiled: if PB cries for a half hour, we're both freaked out that something's really wrong.

Favorite toys: Blue car, anything made of paper (he has attempted to eat at least one library book), sock monkey, O-Ball, the toy from his high chair, food.

Verbal skills: He babbles all the time now: "mamama" and "babababa". He does this cute thing where he babbles while chewing on something, which is handy when I turn my back and he scoots over to DH's slippers and starts gnawing on them. (Yes, sometimes we're convinced we managed to produce a puppy).

Social skills: Happily, he's still a really sociable little guy. One of my dearest friends and her husband were in town for a few days, and PB took to them right away: all smiles and babbling (and drool! He likes to share that, too). The day he turned 6 months old, he got to spend a little time with his 10-month-old cousin. I think he's not entirely sure what to do about other babies, but neither is she: she kind of bapped him in the face a few times, I think to see what he would do. He mostly took it in stride, though he looked a little surprised.

Sleep: Still generally waking up once, between 4 and 5am. We've made an attempt at not getting up, to see if he'll just settle himself back to sleep, but the result of that has been that I'm awake from 4:30am until my alarm goes off, sitting in bed, just listening to him make noise in the other room. And then he's crazy-tired when his normal morning nap time comes around. And I'm getting even less sleep than I would if I got up with him. So this is perhaps not the best solution. Beyond that, though, he's sleeping pretty consistently: bedtime by 7:30pm, sleeps through to that one wakeup, otherwise (if I get up when he does and change/nurse him) he sleeps until 6:30 or 7am. Two to three naps per day, not on any kind of real schedule. 

5 months

I'm a couple of days late with this because cool stuff has been developing behind the scenes here in Schmeiland, both with possible future housing and with my job. But all this means I have had less spare minutes of late, and I'd rather spend them snuggling PB (or catching up on one of the inevitable chores he creates) than sitting at the computer. So: delay. But here's the update:

Weight: 19.6 pounds on his 5-month birthday, according to the bathroom scale.

Length/ Head circumference: No appointment this month, so no update here.

What he's eating: Still strictly breastmilk. We've been having a terrible heat wave (in March - damn global warming) and I don't know if it's that, but he's been drinking less at a time and asking for milk more frequently these days. My theory is that he's thirsty (rather than hungry) from the heat. I don't know. In a given day, he still eats about the same amount as he did before.

He goes to bed by 7:30 each night, and I pump before I go to bed. Lately the late-night pumped milk has been going straight in to the freezer because we don't need a bottle overnight, so our freezer stash is starting to look good.

Physical skills: He's gone mobile. Whenever I say or think that, it's in the same tone one would use to say "Skynet has become self-aware". Fortunately, it's still pretty limited: he moves around by flipping over one way, shimmy-pivoting, then flipping over the other way and repeating. But he made it halfway across the living room in a matter of minutes... so it's happening!

He's also started reaching for food - especially drink glasses - when we're eating. His aim is getting more accurate: any day now he's going to slap the drink out of my hand.

Additionally, he's getting good at grabbing anything about the face: hair, earrings, glasses, etc. He's a fan of DH's beard, and he's managed to fling my glasses to the ground a couple of times now. His default mode is this repetitive grasping motion with his hand: he's constantly palming a surface and then bringing his hands together. If he grabs something, he'll explore it (usually by bringing it to his mouth), otherwise he keeps on searching.

We've seen him stick his rear in the air a couple of times when he's been on his tummy. I think he just has to put all the component motions together in the right order, and he'll be crawling.

Favorite toys: Sock monkey, burp rag, blankets, anything chewable. No visual or tactile signs of teeth yet, but he's all about chewing everything, including the fingers of whomever is holding him.

Verbal skills: The "tugboat" sound, which I worried was fading away, has come back with an adorable vengeance! And now he's doing it while changing the tone of his voice, and it sounds like he's trying to sing. Gah. Kills me. Otherwise he's making occasional consonant sounds: "ma" and "ga" here and there. Sometimes he says "mamamama..." and I act like he's referring to me. I know he isn't yet. But it still makes me happy.

Social skills: No sign yet of any fear of strangers. If PB is met with a new person, he often starts out quiet, but curious. He generally spends a few moments kind of taking it all in before he makes any noise or tries any interaction. One exception is PB's Uncle Adam (DH's oldest brother) who lives overseas. Adam visited last week, and the kid was all over him. I suspect the fact that Adam bears a striking similarity to his dad (PB's very doting grandfather) helped PB feel at home with him, but I was surprised at his complete lack of hesitation: as soon as PB saw him, he reached out to grab his facial hair.

Sleep: For two nights the week he hit 5 months, he slept for 11 hours straight: 7:30pm to 6:30am. Now that I've typed it out, it won't happen again, but he picked days when I really needed some sleep, and I feel fantastic in the morning if I'm not getting up at 4am to feed him. The norm is still one wake up, around 4:00, which is totally doable (and I'm generally happy to offload some milk by that point, anyway). His bedtime is now pretty consistently between 7:15 and 7:30pm. Naps are slightly more regular, now that DH figured out that the kiddo tends to want to go down for his next nap around 3 hours after he went down for the last one. That formula has held for a couple of weeks now, and PB sometimes naps for as long as 2.5 hours... though 1 hour seems pretty standard.

Now to post this before I need to start on the 6 month update! I can't believe this kid has almost been around for half a year already...