Banana Patina

Zane’s up to seventeen and a half pounds and his dad still hasn’t remembered to measure the height. Worst case we’ll get it done later this month at his scheduled doctor visit.

He’s been a bit fussy the past few days and nights, waking his parents up at funny (not funny ha-ha) hours of the night. No new tooth to show for it though, if that’s what’s really going on.

Zane will sit on the floor and entertain himself for long stretches. The only time he really falls over is when overextending his reach to grab a toy. Oh, and sometimes when his dad is sitting nearby as a signal that he’s bored … bonk!

Crawling is a mixed bag. If you put him down on his back, say in the fish play-thing, he’ll eventually roll over and crawl his way out of it. Backwards. Zane’s forward crawling is kind of slow, zig-zaggy and limited to carpet, while crawling backwards is pretty speedy and direct. Yesterday he was crawling backwards across the wood living room floor. After about six feet of meandering he looked over in desperation, ready to be picked up. I held out my hands for him to crawl the couple of feet forward. He looked at them, crawled backwards a few more inches, looked back in horror, crawled backwards again … panic clearly setting in. I did my best not to laugh, but it looked like he was saying, “Help! Throw me a rope, I can’t hold on for much longer!”

Standing while holding on to things gets better and better. There’s a little activity center that he stands at and experiments with. Well, the only thing he seems interested in is a little plastic “page” that flips back and forth to expose shapes. A couple of times he turned the page without removing a finger from below it and put some of his weight down, squishing his finger. The first time was traumatic: betrayal by toy! By the second time he was starting to grasp the cause and effect. We keep pillows piled around for when he eventually topples over.

This intense interest in turning pages comes from the work his mom has been doing while reading him books. To date his “turning the page” consisted of grabbing the book and chewing the corner. Faith, ever patient, now has our little banana head turning pages like a chimp, er, champ.

Happy Birthday to Aunt Becky! She’s of the “spread baby Zane on toast and eat him up” school of aunt doting, and we love her for it (although Zane’s a little nervous).

Oh, and Ted sends along his “enhanced version” of Zane’s new tooth picture, pointing out that there might be a few more than first meets the eye. Click here to see if you can spot them.