General Observations

I have a small plastic bag of collected items that I thought I would go nicely in your baby album.
1) your umbilical cord stump (or what I could find of it)
2) your little homemade birth announcement from the Birth Center with your name spelled wrong
3) weight/height for the first few weeks and months

To date, there is no baby album. I've made only one trip to the bookstore to peruse the selection and walked away completely dissatisfied by the choices. Also, I can't figure out how a baby album fits into our buy-nothing-new year. It's not exactly the kind of thing that one buys used. I guess someday I'll hand you a ziplock back with the little tokens of your infancy and tell you to read the blog for more info.

Without the direction of a baby book and the fill-in-the-blank pages I'm afraid I've failed to record the "developmental milestones" that one usually preserves therein. I'm not exactly sure when you sat up by yourself for the first time, although I know that by 5 months I felt confident that you could sit for your fancy photo shoot (you did tumble once, and if you look closely you can see a little red mark on your forehead in some of the photos). You were rolling over from front to back by the end of three months but then completely went off it--been there, done that. Now you refuse to roll and just scream until someone picks you up. Yesterday, we worked on rolling from back to front and once the novelty wore off, after precisely two rolls, you resorted to the tried and true method of yelling. You can generally find something to occupy your mind and hands no matter where you find yourself so moving doesn't seem to be high on your list of priorities. I think fat babies fight an uphill battle to mobility, there's just so much more to lug around, who wants to bother?

I love that you can find things of interest wherever you land. For instance, I started writing this blog while you were taking your Fred Nap. You woke up before the page loaded but you've been lying beside me, investigating your hands and fingers and blabbing on about the artwork on the walls, Peanut's breath and wondering about that white stuff on the ground. I understand you perfectly well. Even with a stuffy nose (again) you're a perfectly pleasant person.

See, I've done it again. I haven't filled-in-the-blanks. We'll never be able to remember your favorite toy or what you thought of your first snowfall (it was yesterday and it was captivating for about 2 minutes). But right now you're just making the cutest noises and I want to stop and listen.

The picture above is posted as proof that every once in a while I go wild and dress you like a girl.