Like sands through the hourglass. . .

Jonathan's favorite thing to look at these days is the clock in our living room. It captures his attention with the gold-tone pendulum swinging back and forth. He stares at it, and struggles to get closer to it when we hold him up. However, the clock engenders a certain respect that we haven't seen before. When we get him very close to it, he doesn't start trying to smash it with his fists as he does almost everything else. Instead, he seems a little shy. He's happy just to look at it. This morning he was staring when it rang the half hour. He looked startled for a moment and then gave a slow, secret smile to himself.

We are all a little loopy on cold medicine and broken sleep. Jonathan is stuffy and wakes up at night for comforting. We brought out the crib wedge to elevate his head a little and give him some relief. However, when Chris peeked in to check on him at midnight, he had turned around in his crib and was sleeping with his feet elevated. I'm sure he wishes I'd put the nose drops on his toes, too.

Baby on the move

The days of plopping Jonathan down on the floor and wandering off for a bit are drawing to a close. I can no longer be sure he'll still be there when I come back! He started with rolling front-to-back on Mother's Day. That sure cut down tummy time in a hurry. He sits for longer and longer periods, but as he gets more aggressive in reaching for toys, he can do a sort of semi-controlled fall and get down to the ground. And now, for the last two days, there's one more piece of the movement puzzle. He can roll back-to-front.

I watched him put these various skills together this afternoon. He was sitting upright when he saw the little sheep toy, far out of reach. First, he planted his hands in front of him and leaned forward until he overbalanced, landing on his tummy. The, he quickly rolled onto his back. The sheep remained stubbornly out of reach. So, he casually flipped over onto his tummy and grabbed it. Then back over onto his back so he could really give it a good going-over with the two Razor Sharp Teeth of Doom. Like most of his new skills, the whole sequence looked almost accidental. However, I've seen him flip onto his tummy a few times in the past few days, so that establishes it as a definite skill in my book.

Hot and sunny walk today - when we got home, I gave Jonathan some water in a sippy cup. He did great with drinking from it as long as I held it with the spout in his mouth. On his own, he likes to try to drink from the bottom of the cup. So, not quite ready for Harvard yet. Of note, he flipped twice more while I've been typing this. He likes to crinkle the elephant ear on his playmat.

What is this substance? Rice, you say?

Fresh back from Belgium, where Chris and I ate very very well, I started to feel a little sorry for Jonathan. It's not that he needs more calories - already his wardrobe contains only pants with elastic waistbands. But for the past six months his diet has been very monotonous, and we thought it could do with a little jazzing up. So, we broke out the high chair, grabbed a couple of spoons, found our biggest, most absorbant bib, and we were ready to go.

Rice cereal for babies. . . well, all I can say is they could be selling papier mache and I wouldn't ever know. It comes in a cardboard box with a little spout on the side. You pour out a teaspoonful or so of little dessicated white flakes. Then you add a splash of water and mix, creating a white paste. And we wonder why the kindergartners all eat the Elmer's.

So, Jonathan is in his high chair, sensing that something is up. Chris is standing by with the camera, ready to document the first bite for posterity. I've got a spoon ready to go. It edges towards Jonathan's mouth - he sees it and decides he'll grab it. Fortunately, I've read the baby books and learned a trick or two; this is a decoy spoon with no cereal on it. Jonathan gets the decoy and I pick up another spoon. We move forward again, but Jonathan still has a free hand! I'm still smarter, though - there's a second decoy. Finally, spoon in each hand, Jonathan is ready for his first bite. A quarter teaspoonful of rice cereal is nudged past the lower lip, over the teeth, and deposited on the tongue. He looks vaguely disturbed. The cereal remains hidden from view, so we try another bite. A little drips onto the chin. The decoy spoons wave around, making detours into the mouth. Jonathan doesn't seem to mind too much that we're putting paste in his mouth, but he also doesn't seem too excited.

We got about a tablespoon into him before deciding that was enough entertainment for the evening. We'll keep trying, but so far, this feeding thing has been a bit of a bust.

The Ladies' Man

It's a lady baby!

Jonathan is a smooth operator. Cara, who will soon be spending days with him and our nanny, has been coming over a lot this past week as we interview candidates. She's very cute and smiles a lot. Initially, Jonathan played it cool and aloof. We would bring out toys for them to play with and he would be engrossed in them instead. On Saturday, however, we put them both on the playmat. Cara looked up at all the grownups and batted her eyes, then starting cooing at Jonathan. I flipped him over onto his tummy so he could get a better look at her. She waved and her hand went under his chin. That was too much temptation for Jonathan! He dropped his head and starting chewing her hand. He's a real gentleman, though - no evidence of teeth marks on Baby Cara. This should go well.

He also met Abby this weekend, who is only two days younger and so can definitely hold her own. They sat up facing each other with some toys between them. Abby leaned forward to take a closer look at the duckie, so Jonathan got a good view of the top of her head. Suddenly, fascination struck and his hands went up. He had a wonderful time patting her hair, and Abby didn't seem to mind too much.

I don't know how much longer he's going to be a chick magnet. He's making a new noise that is truly awful. It's sort of a raspberry, but it's done further back in the throat. It involves a lot of growling and spitting. We're ignoring him every time he does it in hopes he'll stop.

We had our first dip in the grownups' bathtub this morning. Jonathan sat on a nice blue towel and I ran in a few inches of warm water. He was enjoying the soap (he likes to chew on his hands after I soap them, but before I rinse them) and getting rinsed off with water poured from a cup. The new rubber duckie I bought from the fancy-schmancy toy store is a bit of a bust - it floats on its side and looks like it's dead. Anyway, all was well until a little rinse water caught him in the face. It startled him, so he kicked. That made a big splash, which startled him again. There was a lot of thrashing and water flying about for about thirty seconds; then I pulled him out of the tub and held him in the air. That cooled things down (literally) and once I put him back in, he was fine.

The duckie, however, was out for the count.