Six Months!

Leopleurodon is officially six months old! It's amazing.  Leo is right on the brink of a whole new stage of development, he's leaving the non-mobile newborns and is quickly approaching the Mobile Infant Stage.

Gross Motor: He pushes up, rolls over front to back, pulls his knees underneath him, and a brand new achievement in the last few days is pushing up with one hand and reaching with the other. Oh my little man is growing up. Crawling is imminent. He can sit hunched over his legs using one hand to balance for short periods (around 45 seconds), he can sit for longer periods (5 minutes or so) with back support. Sitting unsupported will occur in another month or so. 

Fine Motor: Leo can grip toys with both hands, but hand cooperation is still rudimentary. As of right now, Leo is right hand dominant. When I give him small things to explore he usually uses his left hand to stabilize his body and grasps with his right hand. Purposeful hand to hand transfer should be coming anytime now and in another month or so he'll be holding with one hand and exploring with the other. While is grasp has definitely developed he still can't use his palm to get things into his mouth, rather he tries to fit his fist into his mouth but that will also develop soonish. Pincer grasp (index and thumb grabbing) is still three months away. 

Food: Leo now has eaten avocado, oat cereal, applesauce, black beans, and rice puffs. He also is improving his ability to drink from a cup--he now swallows slightly more watered down juice than dribbles down his chin. Although he still nurses around every 3.5-4 hours,  I can tell that he's definitely entered the sensitive (albeit long) period for weaning. He's easily distracted and he would much rather be exploring things. 

Sleep: Leo naps around 9 and 12:30 for an hour and again at 3:30 for 40 minutes. He goes to bed at 6ish with a widely varying night feeding that ranges anywhere from 1 to 4am. Half of the time he has a second feeding right before dawn, and gets up for the day at 7:20...almost to the minute. And always falls asleep with a very specific combo of shushing, bouncing and bobbing (those are different actions and Leo can tell the difference). That is until tonight. After making the controversial and hard-thought-out decision, Leo fell asleep all on his own after 1 hour and 15 minutes of crying. More about that later.

The moral of the story is my little man is getting just a little bit less dependent on me-- I used to be his whole world, but now my job is to help him discover it. My lovely little baby is ready for adventure.

P.S. Realizing that this is only my 7th post in three years shows that my stick-to-itiveness is suspect. However, seeing as I've emerged from the cave of school, newborn, cross-country move, I have a lot more time to write things down, and a lot more inclination to do so now seeing as I have such a fascinating subject to write about. *winks* So go ahead and expect pretty regular updates on everyone's favorite baby dinosaur here.