N. turned five months old last week and he has really been coming along quite well. He gets more and more observant by the day. When we have him at the table he will swivel his head around to see who is talking. He enjoys some books more than others (based on the illustrations I think) and he does a good job of paying attention when I read him books-but that's probably because I use the book to block his vision of anything else. He's rolling over with ease now, although he doesn't do it too often. He's giving us coos, cackles, and lots of smiles when he's happy, and he'll almost always return a smile. Tummy time has completely changed and is now an almost completely positive experience.
Tummy time is something which we could've done better at from the beginning. I want to say they recommend 15 minutes of tummy time per day once they're a few weeks old, but I don't remember exactly. Because babies should sleep on their backs, and that's how you almost always hold a newborn, it's important to get them on their stomachs to develop those muscles and reflexes. In N.'s case, he hated it. Totally hated it. At the beginning they can't hold up their head long enough to switch sides, so you use a blanket or pillow to support them. But he hated it, he'd look around for five seconds and start crying. Bit by bit he got better, as he was able to turn his head, then support himself. Well, as of a few days ago, N. loves tummy time. He can totally support himself using his arms, and can still stay up while he uses one arm to grab a toy and shake it about or move it around. He seems to enjoy this new perspective of looking at the world, and given some toys on his play-mat or a blanket, he'll chill for 15 or 20 minutes without needing too much help or care from us. It has been cool to see him stay calm in what used to be torture. And yes, never once did I think I'd be writing about tummy time. I hadn't even heard of it until after N. was born.
Even more exciting is that N. is eating food! At the four month check-up the doctor said we could get started with baby food whenever we wanted, as he was already doing a fairly good job of supporting his head. So we started about two weeks ago, and the first few days were pretty messy, but he's really getting the hang of it. According to the doctor, their stomachs are still small and just getting used to all these new foods, so there's very little caloric or nutritional value in the food. It's just to get them used to eating from a spoon and to the tastes. We started N. on carrots, and then, in order, peas, bananas, green beans, sweet potatoes, and apples. Yesterday and today he's eating squash. I did a tiny bit of reading about what to start them with, and it is not essential to start with the traditional rice cereal, and even recommended to start with vegetables then fruits, so they'll get used to and hopefully like those flavors (plus rice cereal has lots of sugar-so you don't want them getting too used to that). We were lucky, as he really took to eating from a spoon, and does a pretty good job of keeping the food inside his mouth.
It really is fun and interesting to watch as his brain, eyes, and ears get better and better at recognizing sights and sounds. When you start to think about it, the world, or even just his grandparents' house in Iowa, has so, so many things to learn and identify and understand. That little brain of his has got to be turning a mile a minute. He's not crawling yet, so we haven't started chasing him around and worrying about everything he can grab. I'm sure my parents hope we're out of the house before that happens.
