Author: The Notorious M.O.M.

Mr. Henry Seamus Nack turned six months old today. We can hardly believe it! Time has flown since he’s arrived on the scene. He’s gotten so big, and just lately he is so much more animated and alert than even a month ago. We love his giggles, his mischievous little grin and sparkling eyes, and his wonderful talent at sleeping through the night. He has started making a lot of sounds, prompting his big bro to say “What’s Goonie talkin’ about? Crazy baby!”

We go in for his official check-up with Dr. S. on Monday, so we’ll post his stats then. He’s growing like a weed, and is a big fan of his rice cereal. He cannot keep his hands off the spoon when it nears his mouth. And boy does he have a strong grip! If he’s this excited about cereal, I can only imagine his enthusiastic reaction to other, far tastier foods in the near future. So Happy Half-Year, Henry! And we’ll lift a teensy baby-spoon to the next six months!

[Click the image for a larger version.]

He seems pretty excited about his new discovery, no?

Today “little” Henry turned five months old! To celebrate, he napped for 1.5 continuous hours, then accompanied Finn and I to “tiny playgroup” at our friend Tara’s house. The rest of the day was spent doing tricks in the crib (rolling over) instead of sleeping. He is so amazed at his own rolling skills that he absolutely refuses to stay on his tummy during playtime. He just instantly lurches to one side and flips over.
He’s following in his big brother’s footsteps and is becoming totally fascinated with lights and light fixtures. He marvels at the Christmas tree and I catch him gazing up at the lamps in the living room quite a bit. He’s also every bit as big as Finny was at 5 months–he’s already sporting his six- to nine-month wardrobe! His little thighs look like turkey drumsticks!

Our littlest guy has a lot going on these days. Henry’s been very actively working on his core strength in order to start rolling–arching his back, kicking his legs, and tipping his torso over, diligently practicing.
Today it all came together for him, and he was triumphantly rolling from tummy to back. He can roll both to the left and to the right! Next up: rolling back onto his tummy, or a continuous roll from tummy to back to tummy. We’ll keep mama’s milk on his training table, and make sure he’s got enough room in his ever-smaller PJ’s to get good momentum going.
I think he’s also teething again–he’s making some really weird expressions with his mouth, and is chewing on anything he can get into his tiny maw. The drooling and fussing seem like good evidence as well. We’ll let you know if any new chompers appear!

Finn turns 21 months old today, and is taking it somewhere new on a daily basis. We’ve been looking at lots of ABC and number books, and Dad-o and Finny have been spending some quality time with the Sesame Street gang, singing “C is for Cookie” and counting things with, of course, the Count von Count. We were wowed when Finny actually recognized the letter C and a couple others in one of the library books. He even knows, courtesy of Kermit, that a capital B looks like a fat man with his belt too tight. “B… Belt too tight!”
We were also excited when he counted to three (instead of his usual “two!”) one day. So imagine our surprise when Finny was running around the other evening, chattering about various things, when, almost under his breath and without fanfare he exclaimed:
“onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten… Eleven!”
I totally missed it, but John and our sitter, Laurie, caught the tail end of it. Luckily for me, he did it again a few minutes later and I got to hear it that time.
Now, he still really can only go to three or maaaaaybe four when we’re actually counting objects together, but he sure has the syllabic sequence of numbers one through eleven down pat as a thing unto itself. It’s almost like a little chant he does every once in awhile.
Oh, and when we ask “And what comes after 11, Finny?”, his reply is “Six!”

This week has been loaded with mini-milestones for both boys. This means that Mom-o has to start getting crafty to outwit her little guys when needed!
For instance, Finn has started to understand and repeat the sequence of numbers from one to five. He has also started to buy into the idea of just eating “a couple more bites” of something before he is allowed to get down from the table. It’s great because now we don’t face flat-out resistance to eating his dinner, he cops a plea bargain. This is where Mom-o takes advantage of the little perp, saying “two more bites” and then working on our numbers as he continues to eat. “One bite! Two bites! What’s after two? Three! Four! Do you remember what comes after four? Five!” After he eats a decent amount of dinner I ease up on the counting, but I figure learning and eating is a good combo!
Henry, too, is working on a lot of things. He’s grabbing and pinching everything in sight, including my skin while he nurses. I’ve introduced Ollie the owl in hopes that he’ll grab and twist *him* instead of me, and it works sometimes. Henry’s also turned a corner on napping, it seems. I am now able to dispense with the rocking and holding before putting him in his crib. Now I just put him straight in while he is awake but ready to sleep, and he does the rest. He’s also starting to nap for a decent amount of time (anything over 60 minutes is fantastic), and can resettle himself if he partially wakes during the nap. Yesterday he had two big long 2-hour naps instead of three 30-minute ones. *That* is a development worth celebrating!

Our ever-bigger little guy, Mr. Henry Seamus Nack, had his 4-month check-up visit with Dr. S today. Here are the stats:
25 inches tall!
17 pounds even!
43 cm head circumference!
Still spitting up like a champ (a bigger dose of Zantac is now required)!
Further wowing the doc were the strength of “Goonie pushups”, his newfound ability to lock his knees when placed in a standing position, his 2 lower teeth (no more visible on the horizon right now), and his enjoyment of the normally-dreaded hip joint rotation test. Most babies hate it, but Henry started laughing! And maybe Henry caught on to Mom-O’s pre-natal yoga moves while in utero since his cobra pose is so good! Entire torso off the ground.
He had 2 more shots, and cried quite a bit, but manned-up fairly quickly as we made our way to the reception desk. The doc wants to go ahead and have us schedule another renal ultrasound to check in on how his kidneys and ducts are doing, because if we can, it would be nice to take him off the antibiotic. So we’ll do that within the next few weeks and post the results. Worst-case, minor surgery on his renal ducts, best-case, the problem has resolved itself.

Henry’s really been working on his upper body strength these days. Lots of “Goonie Push-ups” as Finny says, plus random squirming, has resulted in little Henry being able to roll over from tummy to back! He did it twice yesterday during tummy time on his play mat. The first time it took a few minutes for him to get from tummy to side to back, but the second time it only took a few seconds! Nice job, H-man!