Growth & Appearance: You have a full head of hair that’s somewhere between blond and brown. You have way more hair than I remember either of your brothers having. Your eyes are no longer blue but aren’t quite brown either.

You’re long and despite ‘falling’ in the weight percentile, you have plenty to pinch.

You’re rockin’ the helmet and we’re noticing improvement. You don’t mind your helmet one bit and you wear it 23 hours per day. It’s made for some interesting hair-dos as your hair has learned to grow up and over it, making for an ocean wave appearance when we take the helmet off.

You’re in size 3 diapers.

Sleeping: We still put you in the wombie overnight but you’re outgrowing it in the developmental sense; meaning you’re squirming around enough that the thing ends up backwards on you by the time the sun is up. You’re also able to roll onto your belly and I think it’s time to give you the freedom to move about freely.

You sleep through the night most every night, with the middle-of-night wakings being a once a week or so occurrence. On average you go to sleep around 8:30pm, I wake you before I go to bed around 10pm to top you off, and you wake up around 7am. You nap around 10:30 for 2 hours or so. You tend to nod off in the late afternoon but never for very long and sometimes just during your feeding at that time; it’s far from an official ‘afternoon nap’.

You’re still in a crib in our room but now that you’re more consistently sleeping through the night, I think we’ll put you in the boys room soon enough.
Eating: You’re blowin’ and goin’ on solids. You have yet to find a food you haven’t devoured. You’ve had carrots, zucchini, broccoli, peas, banana, avocado, yogurt, pear, sweet potato, chicken, corn.

You love food. We often get distracted while feeding you because of everything and everyone else that needs our attention, causing you to flail about and whine until we pick up the loaded spoon and deliver the tasty morsels into your mouth. It’s a joy to feed you based solely on the fact of how happy it makes you.

We feed you with a spoon but let you practice your pincer grasp on your own, which you haven’t quite mastered. When you make a total mess of yourself, I bring you and the highchair outside and literally hose you both down.

We feed you solids twice a day, once after your second morning feed and again at dinner, when we’re all eating together.

You still breastfeed every few hours for an average, I’d guess, of 8 feedings per day.

Development: Within a weeks time you pushed from belly to a sitting position, then were able to scoot back but not forward, and then – just like that – you were crawling. The day after you started crawling you pulled yourself up in your crib. You crawl with ease now and have pulled to stand on a few different things.

You laugh a lot and are easily entertained.

You tend to reach for things with your four fingers and pressed together and your thumb tucked in, as if making a tight number four. Occasionally your pointer finger will bend in and it looks like you’re making an alligator shadow puppet.

You’re happy going from person to person but can’t stand watching me repeatedly come and go into a room and will ultimately cry for me. You also do the craziest squeal when you see me come home from work or from running errands.

You open and close your fingers into and out of a fist when you’re excited; it’s like you’re trying to catch excitement but haven’t quite realized that feelings aren’t tangible.

We use the playpen, which we didn’t use for either of your brothers other than for sleeping accommodations when traveling. That’s because there are so many legos and small toys everywhere and keeping you safe is nearly impossible. And so, we box you in. You don’t mind it. In fact, in the late afternoon you’ll lay down in there for a cat nap and it’s always nice to see you drift off to another land in a well lit room, with all the chaos surrounding you.
Favorites: With crawling, you are now able to reach beyond what we simply set in front of you. That said, you have a new found affinity for Jimmie’s dog bones and gross, dirt stained, stuffed toys.