The vitals

He’s small and tall, 10th percentile weight and 75th percentile height. The doctor’s not worried about the weight and neither are we. She said as long as he seems happy, great. She also said that he seems like a baby that only asks for what he needs, so if he’s up all night nursing (as he was for a couple weeks), I should nurse him, but we should also increase his solids intake. I really appreciated that advise. It made me feel like I wasn’t doing anything wrong that made him torture me all night, and there was a solution.

All his rashes are cleared up. He’s perfectly healthy.

Solids

We started him on solids at about five and half months. John noticed that he was very loud and lunging at the table whenever we ate dinner. I just thought the baby wanted a different toy. He wanted food.

The good news is he’s basically liked everything we’ve offered. Sweet potatoes, apples, pears, peas, brown rice—he’s opened his mouth for them all. It’s so strange to have a baby who actually eats since Rose refused all solids for a long time.

The bad news, the food didn’t seem to agree with his system. He started pooping 12 times a day. I counted, 12. Some of those, of course, came in the middle of the night. The on call nurse suggested the natural sugars in the fruits and vegetables were too much for him and to emphasize brown rice cereal. It seems to have helped.

More bad news, he hasn’t been as interested in food the last few days. Tonight at dinner we sat down to a crab feast with visiting relatives. Well, they sat down. I tried to feed David in his high chair, and he got mad. So, I nursed him in the livingroom and then let him play by himself while I ate. It all worked out great because how was I planning to crack crabs, eat it with my fingers, and feed the baby? I’m assuming he’ll like food again eventually.

Sitting Up

Baby development is absolutely miraculous. One day he could hold a sitting position for 10 seconds, the next day it was 15, and then in no time flat it was fifteen minutes. He still does faceplants. This morning he got a big bump on his forehead from crashing into the rice cooker. (The old rice cooker is one of Rose’s toys on the floor of John’s office next to David’s stim gym. Obviously, we need to do some rearranging.) But, he can also lean forward, grab the synagogue new member packet and crumple it into his mouth before I can turn around. What a clever baby!

Blah Blah Blah

That’s what he hears us saying all day long, so he’s started saying it too. I made the mistake of trying to have a business meeting on speaker phone while David was awake. Every time my boss tried to talk, David thought he should talk too.

We had a better time when I was unloading the dishwasher tonight. He said blah blah. I said blah blah. We both did a lot of grinning.

Adoring Rose

David was supposed to be nursing to sleep while Rose ate her bedtime snack. Except Rose kept kissing him, and he kept turning around to grin at her. People ask me, “How is it with two?” with this tone of voice that implies I’m probably a valium away from throwing them both out the window. When Rose does little dances for him, offers him toys, he grins and giggles at her, and I drink ice water and read a magazine, two is a piece of cake.

Temperament

He can sit with a spoon in his hand for fifteen minutes and only poke himself in the eye once. He’s a lot of fun.