What's new in John Michael's World

Babbling
Mosquito Bites (see video below!)
Teeth
Amoxicillin
Crawling
Hats

So - lots of new things for a little guy. Just last week he started babbling up a storm. It's pretty funny. Here's a snippet of it:




We're up to 5 (yes, five!) teeth now. Apparently, he thought it was a good idea to have three teeth come in on the top all at once. The two front teeth are just barely coming through. But he must be feeling better. After last week's lovely schedule of waking up every 1-3 hours at night, he's gone back to a much nicer schedule of just being up twice in the night. You wouldn't think that just getting 4 hours of straight sleep could make such a big difference, but it definitely does! Anyhow, his crankiness and inability to sleep last week were also due to the fact that he had an ear infection. He's happily taking his amoxicillin (that stuff is sickeningly sweet!) and hopefully healing up. I think it was all a ploy to try and get out of his second dose of the flu shot. Little does he know - we're going back next week to get it!

Okay, onto the crawling. I'm a skeptic on this one, but Mike & Gracie both say he is crawling. I have yet to see *true* crawling. Which I consider to be up on hands and knees and going forwards (or backwards, I guess). He's definitely doing the "army crawl" (as my friend Katherine termed it) and can slither around on his belly (and pivot really well!). But he's not really in that - whoa, where did he go? if you turn your back for a second. I'm looking forward to it, but also a little worried. I know there was at least one time where I "lost" Clara. We were in our house, but she was so fast and I'm sure I was distracted.... so therein ensued a frantic search for a crawling baby. It's amazing how many places a baby could be! And not helpful that they don't understand to answer you when you call. So, I imagine JM will be a baby on the loose at least once, if not several times. At least this time I can enlist two helpers when I am hunting for him...

Since I don't have any video of the "crawling" that is supposedly going on, here's a sample of one of his favorite activities. And yes, the background noise is annoying. And yes, it's a Tootle golden book computer game that we bought for Clara. (have to work on checking these things out better before buying...)



Finally, hats. The hats are only new because it is finally "cold" here in the mornings. When we head out to take Gracie to school on MTW, it's still very chilly in the mornings. So in an effort to be a "good" mommy, I pop a hat on JM's head. What we have is basically just a step above the newborn hat - it's a a blue velour number that just fits snuggly on his head and you cuff it up. Just like a normal ski hat for a boy. Except that it is a very bad design for a newborn. Clara informed me on the way home today (when I asked if he as asleep) "no, but he can't see anymore." When we got home, I discovered that the cuff was now acting as a blinder. Hmmm, so much for the "good" mommy effort.