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.

   

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