In Praise of the Bwun

(Surely you’ve been warned by the title.)

Yesterday was the Bwun’s 6 month checkup. I have to say, he did amazingly well. Let me tell you all about him.

Weight: 15.87 lbs, 19.87 percentile
Length: 26.5 in, 52.19 percentile
Head circumference: 16.5 in, 8.18 percentile

Alright, so maybe those numbers aren’t really convincing. He does seem a bit on the small side. Maybe developmental milestones would be better. (Here I go way overboard on the mom thing – the doctor said the Bwun has met a lot of the milestones for 9 months and, if he were examining the Bwun without knowing his birthdate {and ignoring how small he is} he’d guess the Bwun is about 8 months old. Way to be ahead of the curve!)

Best Bwun ever? I vote yes.

Four to Seven Months

Movement milestones

• Rolls both ways (front to back, back to front) – check
• Sits with, and then without, support of his hands – we’re working on it.
• Supports his whole weight on his legs – done and done, months ago
• Reaches with one hand – check, to grab my face. With his claws.
• Transfers object from hand to hand – check. We’ve been playing games while he sits in his new highchair (which I love!!).
• Uses raking grasp (not pincer) – check. For some reason he especially likes to do this when he eats.

Visual milestones

• Develops full color vision – not really sure how I would test that.
• Distance vision matures – sure?
• Ability to track objects improves – check. He can now track me when I leave the room, and start crying a few seconds later when he understands that I’m gone.

Language milestones

• Responds to own name – check. Except that we call him “baby” most of the time…I really ought to call him the Bwun, right?
• Begins to respond to “no” – actually, I don’t think I say “no” to him very much. It didn’t occur to me that he’d begin to understand it this early.
• Distinguishes emotions by tone of voice – ok, not so much. That I can tell.
• Responds to sound by making sounds – I’ll post a video soon. He’s hilarious.
• Uses voice to express joy and displeasure – check check.
• Babbles chains of consonants – chk chk chk chk chk.

Cognitive milestones

• Finds partially hidden object – haven’t tried that. I’ll let you know tomorrow.
• Explores with hands and mouth – expertly.
• Struggles to get objects that are out of reach – check, and went one further to crawl in order to get the objects that are out of reach.

Social and emotional milestones

• Enjoys social play – check. Most of all when I just want a little break from playing with him.
• Interested in mirror images – check, and we have plenty of mirrors for him to look in. He used to get angry when he saw us in the mirror. Maybe he thought I was holding a different baby?
• Responds to other people’s expressions of emotion and appears joyful often – check. He is the best.