Jacob at 5 months

Jacob turned 5 months old this past Wednesday. Five months, people. He makes me feel like I'm living in some sort of time warp. Everybody always tells you how "it goes so fast". As always, Everybody is right.

There is no longer any vestige of blob-hood remaining in my Jacob. What we see before us know every day is a wiggling, giggling, baby version of Godzilla. In the last month he outgrew his infant car seat; now he has outgrown the Bjorn. I put him in it and we look like circus freaks because his feet stop just short of my knees. That, nor his girth, wouldn't stop me from carrying him around. What does give me pause is that his torso is so long that the Bjorn cuts off the circulation in his arms -- he's in it for maybe 5 minutes, kicking and gleeful as can be, when I look down and his little arm-sausages are decidedly purple.

This is causing a bit of a crisis. No more infant carrier car seat, no more Bjorn. The dude can't even crawl yet. We can put him in the stroller, but he dislikes it when it stops moving, and that also gives us nowhere for Isaac to sit should he tire. I thought about buying a double stroller, but all the ones I looked at were either too heavy, too big to fit through a door, or way too expensive for my taste. So I did what any hippie mom would do and bought a HotSling. It gets here sometime next week and if it doesn't solve all my problems, well, at least it will look, as the name suggests, Hot.

So when he's not being toted around in his Bjorn-tourniquet, Jacob is up to no good these days. He spends every waking moment practicing his grabbing.


What does he want to grab? Not his toys, no sir. Only things that will bring the mess and the pain. Mostly your coffee cup (especially if it's full), your fork, plate, salad greens, bowls full of chicken noodle soup, and especially Big Brother's toys. You can imagine the brother-on-brother smackdowns that ensue. "Don't hit your brother." "If you take a toy away from Jakey, you have to find him another one." Poor big brother. We are giving a lot of timeouts here.

Barring any toy infractions committed by either party, Jacob and Isaac do play well next to each other. We spend a lot of time on the floor in Isaac's room.


Note how Jacob is sitting up here. I put him that way, and he is pretty good at staying there by himself for at least a minute before his attention is called elsewhere by something that is clearly in need of a good coat of slobber. His favorite position now, though, is being on his belly. He is an excellent scooter and can rotate a full 360 degrees on his belly in under two minutes. From his belly today, I saw him get on all fours for the first time:


No signs that he's doing that with any intent to crawl yet, but I'm sure we're well on our way now.

I also gave him his first solid food today -- rice cereal with breast milk. I think he was ready. The lunging for the spoon really gave him away.



This was also the month wherein Dada became an interesting creature. No longer is there unstoppable whining when I must pass Jacob off to Dada. Whenever Dada enters the room (as caught on the video clip), he almost always gets a smile from Jacob. It is so lovely to see that both children are now receptive to their Dada. And that's not just because I can suddenly take a shower without a screaming baby in the room.