Our Little, Lately

Our little baby is becoming a little boy so quickly!  He's strong, fun, and determined but still snuggly.  

At his four month check-up, he was 17 lbs, 15 oz (90+%) and, according to the corpsman (sort of the Navy equivalent of a nurse), 25.5 in (55%).  Considering he has currently outgrown all of his 6 month sleepers length-wise, and fits into 9-mo and 12-mo clothes, I highly doubt that.  When measuring at home, I got 27 in.  

He loves standing up (and has since like 2 months - crazy boy) and balances if you hold his hands. 

He's even started sitting up on his own, which makes me mostly amazed at his strength and proud, but also a little sad that he's growing up and becoming independent already!

These days, you can frequently find him playing with his toes (especially when they have little racoons on them, courtesy of his grandma) or attempting to eat an entire fist (or sometimes two).

He sleeps really well at nights, and usually well during naps.  As long as he's had enough sleep, he wakes up like this:

Some day you'll have a crib, little one!

but with an even bigger smile (the photo that got his smile was really blurry) and lots and lots of coos and babbles and leg kicks (he's working on toning his abs).  Soon we will transition out of the swaddle, but for now he really, really loves it (and practically falls asleep the moment we tuck him in it).  

 
His newest "trick" is drinking out of water bottles and cups.  He reaches for my water glass nearly every time I drink it around him, and holds the cup and laps water out of it like a little puppy.  It's precious.  So we let him play with our water bottles, and the new sippy cup his grandma Lolli gave him.  

He loves swinging in the park, going anywhere in the Ergo baby carrier (thank you Jenn + Michelle!), and has a really fantastic determined look, complete with a lip pucker and furrowed eyebrows.  He's been hating the car, so we have been avoiding long road trips, and is significantly less spastic in the bathtub these days.  From months 2-4, he was CRAZY in the tub and flailed around, in a very happy way, in the tub like you cannot even imagine.  We meant to get a video, but he likely would have gotten the camera drenched, as I basically took a shower each time I gave him a bath.

We go for a run several days a week (I'm training for a half marathon in November! Shout out to Lindsey!) and as long as the run lasts less than 50 minutes, he looks like this:

as he wakes up from his nap after we're done.  Pass that 50 minute mark, though, and it's uncontrollable screaming, which, in case you were wondering, is not my favorite work-out sound track.  ;)

His arms are getting stronger, and he even inch-worm scoots these days, which I try not to actively develop because the idea of a crawling 5 month old scares me. 

Overall, he's awesome.  Every week is different - some moments I feel like superwoman and others I feel like I do not understand him or what he wants at all.  It's challenging and rewarding in much different ways than I've been challenged or rewarded in the past, that's for sure!  We love you, little pumpkin/monkey/grizzly bear/monster man/pumpernickel/tooterton (our nicknames get progressively weirder... and I make up a new one almost every day when I go pick him up from a nap).