And by the way

The Bwun cracks me up.

Caption? Anyone?

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.

Brown and Blue

Or, stripes and dots.

I’ve been trying to spend at least an hour outside with the Bwun lately. He’s way more mellow outside (which should really say something – he’s pretty mellow indoors already…), and I figure it’s good to get fresh air. Luckily the other side of the duplex has a nice big tree, and means the lawn is softer. The Bwun loves watching cars go by.

Today he was being extra cute, so we made a quick trip inside to get the camera. That made him very angry, so he wasn’t as cute once we got back to our spot on the lawn. But we tried having a nice time anyway. See?

Although he does smile, he was still grouchy about having to go inside. Despite the fact that we were only inside for about 4.5 seconds.

We're trying to work on sitting up, but honestly, I'd rather have him perfect his crawling skills first.

The Bwun is top-notch at perching.

He was fascinated by my sandal, probably because I kept tapping my foot. The Bwun loves devouring shoes. I'm not thrilled about that.

Our neighbor came out to chat, so of course the Bwun had to look extra concerned.