Wow, half a year already.
15 months ago, on 15 March, I was staring at a grinning Bastiaan with a positive pregnancy test in my hand.
No, wait. I was already 6 weeks pregnant then, so that was around 13-14 months ago.
This means that 15 months ago, we started this amazing race of more than a million participants and Nico came out the winner.
And at the risk of souding cliche, he's grown so fast!
He's become a lot more interactive and chatty and I've noticed him passing objects from one hand to the other. And it is apparently fun to pull Mummy's hair close to his face to get a kiss. He does it so often I started feeling like these pecking birds that fill up with water and tip over on a regular basis. Time for a shave I guess (my hair, that is, not my beard or legs).
Ba Ngoai has come over from New Caledonia for two weeks and he's been loving the constant attention he's gotten so far. The little devil certainly knows how to pull the cute look to avoid naptime in his cot and get more cuddles so he can sneakily fall asleep in her arms.
He's also managed to catch his first cold, which makes him sound like a little snorting piglet whenever he feeds. Must find out how this flashy cordless electric nasal aspirator works, and take him to the GP tomorrow if it's still bad.
Here we go again with these milestones:
- Mastered skills at 6 months:
- Turns towards sounds and voices. Check. Unfortunately Nico also does it during a feed, which last twice as long as they should do. After all, he's inherited my attention span.
- Imitates sounds. Nothing here. I've managed to get him to repeat an 'uh-oh' or two, but not on demand. We do hold extensive conversations on the change table, but no exchange of meaningful information took place.
- Rolls over in both directions. Fat chance, with his track record. He's only rolled from front to back twice. The rest of the time he'll just stay on his front and grizzle or fall asleep. - Emerging skills at 6 months:
- Is ready for solid foods. Whoops. Been doing this for a month now, readiness signs or not.
- Sit without support. He can sit when I pull him by the hands, but he has to hold onto my hands and he's shaky like baby-shaped jelly. But there's help here.
- Mouths objects. Check. He'll mouth anything that he can lift or bring his mouth to, and even gums it. My thumb has been the victim of his gum attacks, and it's not pretty.
- Passes objects from hand to hand. Check. But just once today. - Advanced skills at 6 months:
- Lunges forward or starts crawling. No way, we'll be lucky to see some forward movement before 8 months.
- Jabbers or combines syllables. Hmm. I'm not sure what constitutes jabbering. I don't think Nico's discourse attempts on the change table count.
- Drags objects towards himself. He has reached objects I've put in front of him and pulled them to inspect them, so I guess we'll count this.
