The Adventures of Wiggle Baby

Since my last update, I’ve been feeling much better. This is partially because my involuntary virus injections have worn off, but mostly because I’ve been going outside — a lot! Along with taking long walks around the neighborhood in my new luxurious transportation cart, I’ve been able to relax leisurely in the lawn and sit on the front porch with my best pals. This is delightful. As a winter person I find everything outside to be brand new sensory information, because until now, I assumed the entire world was composed of a couple thousand square feet of mid-80′s suburban home construction.

Perhaps due to my newfound Spring energy, I have racked up a long list of accomplishments:

1. Now willing and able to lie on my tummy, and be acceptably happy about it, for a minimum of 5 minutes.
2. Can grab my toes with my hands, and even get my feet in my mouth! (Try that, all you inflexible Big People.)
3. At long last, I will fall asleep easily, and more astonishingly, without the oft-hated swaddle or foam cushion things. I’m free, baby! Indeed Madeline will fall asleep easily, but she still needs to work on staying asleep for a while. — Ed.
4. Can stand up, sort of, with lots of assistance, but sort of! Also can bounce around in my new stand-up jumpy seat.
5. Realized the following things are funny: rolling back and forth rapidly while someone makes goofy noises, getting kisses while someone makes goofy noises, and listening to the guitar while someone makes goofy noises. To the uninitiated, it may seem that the goofy noises are the main thing, but they are only truly funny when accompanied with an appropriately goofy action.
6. Still enjoy chewing on stuff, but I’m a little less obsessed about it — for now.
7. Established a new habit of nibbling on my bottom lip and making funny humming sounds. (See photo.)

Most deserving of credit for helping me with these accomplishments is my Mom. She takes me to fun activities every week, and helps me out all the time, even when I drive her a little crazy. Thanks Ma!

P.S. I have still not posted my long-promised videos, but I can assure you that they will appear as magnetic bits on your local computing device in the near future.

This whole growing up thing is hard work!

As soon as I turned four months old, I had to cut the celebrations short with another trip to see the dastardly White Coat People, and this reminded me in no uncertain terms that I quite strongly dislike the White Coat People. They stubbornly continue to jam sharp items into my legs, and viruses into my mouth, while completely disregarding my preference to remain free of sharp items and viruses. Following that, I felt unhappy and was rather bothersome for about a week, which — among other things — did not benefit my already lax weblog posting habits. As an example of my crabby disposition, one day I fell asleep willingly. Regular readers will note that this is surely a sign something is wrong. — Ed. Sure enough, I made up for it by refusing to sleep thereafter!

Since then, I recovered and moved on to new things. My once luscious head of newborn hair has given way to a bit of a balding pattern, as I progress toward a future Big People hairstyle. In the meantime, I’m feeling somewhat patchy and compensating via silly forehead adornments (see photo above) and ridiculous hats. In addition, I have put on some baby weight, which I am mostly attributing to the fact that I am a baby.

As if the piercing leg pain, vaccination side effects and hair loss weren’t enough, the Big People have me on a new workout routine designed to improve my strength and responsiveness, for what I must assume is some sort of Military/Crayola training camp. First there’s lift-em-ups, which is like sit-ups, but instead someone helps lift me to a seated position by my arms. I like that one. Next is roll-em-overs, which involves being coerced onto my side by a strategically located flashy colored object. That’s a bit less fun, but worst of all is lay-em-downs, when I have to switch onto my stomach and try not to be upset about it. I have improved at this, but when I reach my limit, we take a breather with scooch-em-backs, which means I get to go back to my preferred physical location. Make no mistake, these exercises have funny names, but they are hard work.

It’s not all hard work though: I’ve had lots of play time with friends, and I laughed out loud (LOLed?) on camera for the first time last week. I will post the recording once I learn how to emancipate it from the video recording contraption.

On a closing note, yesterday was Mother’s Day, and I want to belatedly thank my wonderful mom, grandmas, and great-grandmas for their continued love and support. You guys are the best!