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January 14, 2006
Monthly Newsletter: Month Six
Dear Dashiell,
Today you are 6 months old, an entire half year already!
Lots more doctor visits this month, but overall the results were pretty positive. Your larynx looks normal, which is a huge relief. You will however need a minor surgical procedure to close up the little hole in your heart that causes the murmur. Hopefully though when that's out of the way you'll gain weight a little faster.
You've either been growthspurting like crazy, or you've switched your clusterfeeding to nighttimes, as my sleep has been very broken by your frequent night feedings. Maybe when your heart is fixed and you don't burn calories as fast I'll get a little more sleep... though I'm not counting on that.
This month the rolling from back to front hit overdrive, and you now roll almost as soon as you're put down. One morning in particular when you were in a happy mood you went from back to front straight through to back again! I was very impressed. So far you have only done that the once. The only problem with the rolling from back to front is that once you're on your belly you will often complain within moments or minutes, yet as soon as I roll you over onto your back again, you flip yourself onto your belly in a matter of seconds. There are days where this is repeated so many times it's like watching some comedy sketch.
I don't think I've ever mentioned what a gassy baby you can be. You fart something fierce. And while we're on that subject, I'd like to address something else... why do your farts smell so much worse than your poo? The difference is like night and day. Smells like that are obscene coming out of a body so small, as are the farts that are long and loud. Where are you storing all this gas? I'd ask how you were learning to make all that racket, but we both know who in this family is responsible for that...
This month you were once again mistaken for a doll by someone. I'm still trying to figure out why people would think I'd be carrying a life-size baby doll on my body as an adult woman, but there you go. The staggering thing is that it isn't the first time it has happened. Anyway, you're so much cuter than any doll.
Occasionally you're a handful though, and it's like having a hyperactive jumping bean. You want to stand constantly, which can be a bit tiresome. I'm sure you're going to be aggravated at some point though, because the physical therapist wants us to concentrate more on making you do the things you're not so good at, rather than constantly cater to the things you can do and love to do. I'm sure that once your upper body strength matches your lower body strength that you'll be off zooming around the room on hands and knees, because you already get your legs under you very well... something which you've been doing over the last couple of weeks. Sometimes when you have bare-ass floortime I look over at you and see a little arsehole staring back at me, because you've gotten your knees or feet under you and are doing a kind of armless downward-facing dog yoga pose and aiming your butt right at me. I try not to be offended at that... at least you don't fart at me when you're in that position, which is something I suppose.
The physical therapist is making us do baby push-ups and sit-ups with you to increase the strength in your trunk and shoulders. She also wants us to stimulate you by providing all kinds of different textures for you to touch with your hands, and also to try and get you to put more things in your mouth, seeing as that is the predominant mode of touching and exploring for babies. Most parents spend their time trying to move things away from their babies' mouths, we get to stick stuff in there instead.
The difference between this month and last month is very marked. At the beginning you weren't really showing any interest in reaching out for things or grabbing anything, towards the end of December this interest had increased and you were grabbing at our faces occasionally. Now you love to grab our faces, and thrust small fingers up your parents nostrils, or pull our glasses off our faces. You even reach out to objects now, including the little blue-and-green donkey that you got from your opa Tjerk and Diane, you seem to enjoy squishing his crinkly-noisy ears.
I'm so glad you're doing so well Dash! and I look forward to seeing what changes the next month brings.
Love,
Mama
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Our little cannibal:
Posted on 10:32 PM to: Dashiell , Newsletter , Photos