Wow – just when I got used to saying that Levi is 6 months old, he turned 7 months old. This means he’s now closer to one year old than not. Good thing I already bought all the supplies for his first birthday party.

So here’s what our little man’s life is about these days:

• Sprouting more teeth. His top two teeth broke through a few days ago.

• A sly grin. He’s such a flirt. He’ll do his new trick: starting with a high-pitched scream and gradually deepening his voice until it’s a loud, low, gutteral grunt. Then he’ll look at you out of the corner of his eyes and smile, obviously satisfied with himself.

• Bouncing. I now know why they call them “Bouncing Baby Boys.” As far as entertainment stations around the house, the bouncy chair is by FAR his favorite. It lasts probably 20 or 30 minutes, compared to the average 5 minutes everything else lasts. Although his exersaucer is not a bouncer, he bounces in it anyway, making a huge racket. If you hold him on your lap, he’ll start jumping up and down and making this irresistable little giggly face, so you have to indulge him in his activity.

• Eating more food. We tried to give him a Cheerio the other day, and apparently he’s not ready for that yet. He made the most offended face, held it in the middle of his tongue, and gagged quite dramatically. But he is making progress – his diet now consists of sweet peas, squash, applesauce, sweet potatoes, bananas and prunes in addition to formula and rice cereal.

• Chasing the doggies. He thinks it is really funny when his dad holds him while playing with the boys. It gets a few cackles out of Levi every time.

• Scooching. He can’t really crawl yet, but he can spin himself in circles and push himself backward.

• Sleeping like a champ. I guess he decided he was ready to sleep through the night (thank the Lord) and he has been for about a month now.  Most nights he sleeps from around 8PM until 6AM.  We’re still working on naps, but we have finally figured out a little trick. Once he goes down for a nap, we set a timer for 25 minutes, and then go wait in his room once the timer goes off. He will awake three times in a row after exactly 30.0 minutes, and you have to be in his nursery ready to pat his little bottom and lull him back to sleep all three times. Then he’ll sleep another hour or so.

• Just generally being a charmer. He now likes to play with my hair – he gingerly twirls it in between his fingers. He also likes to gently touch his hands to people’s cheeks when they hold him. When he awakes, he’ll lie contentedly in his crib, quietly cooing and sucking on his toes until he sees you, at which point his face erupts into the sweetest little smile.

• He kinda reminds me of a baby bird. He has this fuzzy hair on top of his head, his moves are spastic, his eyes are bright and curious, and he pops his little mouth open when you feed him something he likes.

• He now does the “baby banana.” He has already figured out how to arch his back until he’s roughly banana-shaped, and wriggle so that it’s very hard to hold onto him. He usually invokes this maneuver when you’re trying to get him to sleep before he’s ready, or when he’s reclining when he wants to sit up.

   

Wow, has it been six months already? As Jessica commented the other day, “our little boy is growing up fast.” Here is what Levi is up to these days:

• Sitting up on his own. As you can see above, Levi is now able to sit up for an extended period of time without any support from us or the bumbo. He’s a little wobbly at times, but is getting pretty good at figuring out how to balance himself and keep from falling over.

• Gaining weight and getting taller. At Levi’s 6-month checkup, Levi was in the 70th % for weight, 50th % for height, and 75th % for head size. Considering he was below the 10th % for height and 15th % for weight when he was born, that’s not too shabby! And as for his head, well, he’s always had a pretty big noggin. Our pediatrician continues to monitor his head size closely and is watching for any signs of macrocephaly, which is a condition where the head grows abnormally large. But so far, everything looks great.

• Growing more hair. Levi is definitely going to have a full head of hair real soon. It’s growing in pretty thick, especially in the middle, and it looks like we’ll have to cut it in the near future. I think he got this from me. My dad always had a full head of hair and ladies who cut my hair always comment on my think hair and how I’ll never go bald. It looks like Levi’s hair will be similar. As for the light brown/blondish color – we’re still puzzled where that came from.

• Eating solid foods. Well, if you call baby food a solid food, that is. Levi has been eating cereal for several weeks now. He’s still not a huge fan, but Susy (our nanny) can usually get him to eat a bowl every morning. Fruits and veggies, however, are a different story. We bought just about every variety of Gerber baby food the other day. We picked out what we thought to be the blandest one and let Levi try it. He made the most horrible faces and basically refunded everything we were able to get in his mouth. We tried several others to see if we could find one he liked but with similar results. So at this point, he’s eating mainly cereal and occasionally we’ll try a fruit or veggie.

• Throwing stuff. We think Levi is a southpaw because he loves to throw his toys with his left hand. He loves to grab, hold, and touch things with both hands, but when it comes time to get rid of something, he always uses his left arm for the job. This is what we’ve been anticipating all along. Since his stroke affected only the left side of his brain, we’ve been expecting him to utilize his left arm more (since it is controlled by the right side of the brain.) Other than that, though, he shows no signs of having any disabilities or limitations using his right side. In fact, he primarily uses his right foot for pushing off while in his bouncer.

• Getting talkative. Levi loves to jabber and make sounds. Sometimes, we’ll talk to him or ask him a question and he’ll respond with some random sounds like he’s trying to talk back to us. Also, he’s discovered how to scream in this high-pitched voice in the last few days. At first it was really cute, but now it reminds us a lot of that line in Dumb & Dumber where Jim Carrey asks, “You wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?” It still makes us chuckle when he does it – but we also hope he grows out of it in a hurry.

• Loves his bouncer. Levi just loves spending time in his bouncer. He’ll cackle and laugh the whole time he’s in there. He’ll bounce and bounce and seem to never get bored with it. We bought an exersaucer for him the other day that has tons more toys and sound-makers than his bouncer. Levi tries and tries to make it bounce like his bouncer, but since it won’t, he gets bored with it pretty quickly.

• Sending emails. I received this email the other day. Although he hasn’t quite grasped the idea of email addresses, the internet, or even the English language, Levi definitely loves to bang on his mom’s keyboard when she is working:

From: Jessica Date: Aug 1, 2007
Subject: an email from your son

mny vk yukj b kn,
,m s ,./l.uuuuuuuuuj|K<<”