I Have Half a One-Year-Old Today

Exactly six months ago today I gave birth to Toth, and I still haven't finished writing my birth story. But I accomplish something in the past six months: I transformed this little larvae-like creature into a sitting, babbling, breakdancing hunk of cute.

This morning I brought the 3 kids into our doctor's office for a six-month checkup. He was supposed to get a mess of shots but turns out he's running a temperature. News to me! He does have a little cough but otherwise the doc pronounced him in fine shape and instructed us to come back next week for those shots.

He measured 27 inches -- 60th percentile for length, although you know those baby length measurements are not reliable. He now weighs 14 pounds 12 ounces, which puts him in the 4th percentile for weight. Yeah, I know. I must have skim breastmilk.

So it looks like I will never have one of those chubby babies with folds on the arms and legs that I always wanted. As a consolation, I have one of the strongest 6-month-olds you'll ever see. Toth sits with complete confidence and has been sitting up for about a month. He hardly ever propped himself up with his arms like babies usually do at first (with Nutmeg we called it the tripod sit).

He can now use his arms to push himself backwards, which leads to all kinds of frustration when he's trying to move towards a toy and instead ends up with his skinny little 4th-percentile body under the couch. And this weekend while we watched the Packers blow it he perfected his full-body spin, using his arms to turn the front of his body around while his legs drag along.

He's babbling like a champ, saying the nice "ba-ba-ba" and other syllables. Especially when he's mad or frustrated, when his "ba-ba-ba"s take on the air of righteous indignation.

I just finished this fascinating book called Nurture Shock which explains that parents can best help their kids start talking not just by talking to them a lot, but by snapping to attention when they make these wordlike sounds (while ignoring the raspberries and other non-syllabic sounds). So there are lots of fun little conversations going on at our house right now. The girls give him so much positive feedback on his babbling that he probably doesn't need much from me.

Toth had his first accident during that terrible Packers game yesterday too -- one of the older kids toppled over in a heavy dining room chair right on top of him. I was terrified that he'd sustained a head injury or internal injuries or something, but he seemed absolutely fine. He cried for a few minutes and then was back to smiling, with no change in behavior all day. The doc couldn't find any damage this morning either.

Sunday I gave him a few bites of pureed carrots, and he thought that was OK. If I get around to it I'll give him a little more today. I'm not exactly champing at the bit to get to the spoonfeeding stage, but since he's quite capable of picking things up and putting them in his mouth at this point, maybe I won't have to do much of it.