The Curious Case of the Giant Baby

So Everett has passed a number of milestones in his rapid development, but there's been very little on this blog to chronicle all of his progress. Here's an entry I started after he turned four months old:

Everett's four month birthday has come and gone, and he continues to grow like crazy. Shortly after his birth, he was a little below average on height, but now he's at the 90th percentile, at 26 inches. Assuming his adult height will be at least twice his infant height, this puts him on pace to be no shorter than four feet four inches.

Everett remains a joy between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. and a terror at night. He averages two or three decent nights of sleep a week, so we're definitely looking forward to more than three or four hours at a time from our restless son.

The sleep got better very quickly--in June Everett was starting to sleep through the night with a little coddling by his dad when he awoke instead of nursing like he had done every night since his birth. In August we moved him up to his bedroom, where he now spends the hours of 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., babbling himself to sleep and only occasionally getting fussy enough that we need to intervene with a pacifier and a pat on the back.

Everett started eating solid foods a little after his five-month birthday. On June 24 we were eating at Santa Rita down the street, talking about Everett's doctor's advice that we start him on solid foods a few weeks before six months. Brandi was saying that we didn't need to abide by that schedule, and somehow that turned into us feeding him the guacamole that was a few inches from his carrier. Here's the video we shot a few days later. Now Everett usually eats three (sometimes two) times a day. He doesn't show much of a preference--whether it's rice or oatmeal cereal, vegetables, or fruit, he takes big bites and grunts impatiently while you're preparing another spoonful.

Everett started rolling over right around five months as well. Here's a video of one of his first rolls from back to belly. Now he's established a comfort level with being on his belly, sort of. He started sleeping on his belly (really on his knees) and on his side in addition to on his back, but he often gets frustrated when he's on his tummy. He was doing fine on his tummy, pushing up on his arms and looking around, but once he got a taste of the vantage point he can get from sitting up he gets a little frustrated with being on the ground. Sitting up, which he's been doing since he was 6 1/2 months, he likes to reach for his favorite toys, his drum set, his squeaky giraffe Sophie, and his crazy ticklish chicken from his Mimi.

There hasn't been a first word yet, but there's a good chance it will be "mama" or "dada." Everett often says, "ma ma ma..." when he is hungry, and he says, "da da da..." when he is getting his diaper changed or just sitting around. He still babbles and spits some, but a lot of what he does is a high-pitched, squeaky laugh when he gets excited. He also laughs his regular laugh a lot--when he gets tickled on his neck, when Brandi or I runs and jumps up close to his face, when we play peek-a-boo, when we lift him in the air, or when we bounce him on the bed. He smiles a lot--we now have a mirror in the car that sits right in front of him, and he smiles and laughs at his reflection all the time. He has also started smiling for pictures. You used to have to catch him in a smile, but in the last couple weeks he has held a smile when there's a camera in his face as though he knows what he is supposed to do.

Story time has become an integral part of his sleep/nap routine and anytime he needs a little calming. It's great to watch how interested he has become in his books and in listening to us read to him. Many evenings when you say "the end" he eagerly grabs for the next book. We have a lot of books that we are looking forward to sharing with him in these coming days.

We continue to be amazed with each milestone by EW. I'm sure crawling is not too far away, however we are in no hurry for that to happen at the moment. Over the past several weeks, we are watching our small helpless baby turn into a strong, inquisitive boy. As much as we, especially his mom, have been ready for the exhausting parts of the first six months to be over, we also want to cherish these days of his little life.