Milostones: Animal Sounds and Kisses

As this blog is the only form of baby book I am keeping, I need to record that as of Tuesday, Milo says the following animal sounds:

  • Cow (sometimes he just puckers his lips in a silent moo)
  • Sheep
  • Dog
  • Pig/Chicken (some kind of oink/bock hybrid)

He also gives kisses: if you request one, he will lean into you, then pull back with a dramatic "mwah!" Oh, and he definitely understands English. When you ask him to sit down and drink his water, he complies (somewhat), and he will toddle over and hug Ramona or Clifford when directed.

Did I mention he's the cutest baby ever? In case you don't believe me:

Biter

Did you start laughing the moment you read the title of this blog post? It's not funny.

It's not funny when your son is either so impressed or pained by his new teeth that he bites anything within an inch of his mouth. The spoon or finger you are feeding him with. The fleshy part of your thigh as he pulls up on your leg. The arm of another child who happened to reach past Milo's face (this generated an "incident report" at school). After he bites you/something, he grins as though to say "The world is so DELICIOUS."

It's not funny.

Naughty

Milo is learning to be bad and mad. He crawls around trawling for the tiny, the sharp, the swallowable. When he finds it — which he always does, because all of Lucy's favorites playthings are tiny, sharp, and swallowable — he will show it to you triumphantly, put it in his mouth, then motor away. Today I fished a dime out of his maw and he screamed furiously. I told him what a bad baby he was and then smooched his neck till he laughed and laughed. Some scolding. But he really is pretty naughty.

Pavlov's Frog

You would think, after having gone into a dumpster to look for Duck, I would know better than to give Milo a lovey. And yet, the sweetness of a baby's attachment to his transitional object. Sigh. I give him Frog and instinctively, he buries his face in it and starts to suck his thumb. He even twirls and waves it like a pizza when he's eating or trying to fall asleep (exactly like Lu). This time around, I'm wiser: he already has two of them, I can get more at Target and they've been around for a while (I believe this is the same model of Frog that our little friend Niall uses as his lovey and that he set on fire at Christmas).

Zoo Cam

We now know that Milo can pull himself up to a standing position in his crib. Which solves the mystery of how he got the baby monitor camera off the wall: a few days ago Jason saw Milo gazing into the camera as he held and pawed it like a toy, a disconcerting vista, to be sure. Then yesterday, I spied him through the bars of the crib (camera now moved to bookshelf) as he pulled up and reached for the pictures hanging over his bed, and jumped up and down like a baby gorilla at the zoo.

Time to lower the crib, I think.

Milostone: Four Months

He weighs 15 lbs. 3 oz., putting him in the 60th percentile for weight, and taking him off the "super-fat" growth trajectory, which, as his primary food source, I found very satisfying. Oh well. Now's probably an appropriate time to lose that third chin.

He's in the 90th percentile for height. Enjoy that, kid. This is the relatively tallest you will ever be, and you can't even stand up to tower over the other kids.

Head: 40th percentile. I attribute this to his unfortunate right-side flat spot. He's spent too much time with his head turned to the right, sucking his right thumb, being all good-natured. I KNEW there was something wrong with this whole "docile" thing: it will be his misshapen head. GOOD-NATURED AND CROOKED-HEADED.

Official diagnosis: perfect. The kid really is the happiest, smilingest creature you'd want to meet. Lowers blood pressure. Could settle a bar fight. Well on his way to the Nobel Peace Prize.

p.s. I promise not to belabor the "Milostone" device, except now I know Liz D. likes it...

Milostone: Flip

Milo rolled over for the first time today.

We put him in Lu's room to be semi-entertained while Lu and Honour worked out intricate dramas with Playmobil (Lu's room is a guaranteed 30 minutes of happiness).

He's been close to rolling over for weeks now. We had kind of given up. A little while before he rolled over today, I summoned Papa Bear to witness a near-miss. Jason was nonplussed. "He does that all the time."

So we went back to doing what we normally do: ignoring him as he placidly flaps, while we occasionally smile and "guh" at him. During one of my drive-bys, I noticed he was ON HIS STOMACH. He saw me and squawked, as though to say, "WOMAN, I HAVE FLIPPED OVER. RECOGNIZE!"