I can't believe it has been a month since our last blog entry. There's been so much going on that there just hasn't been time to get this updated. I just had my new bank constructed from the ground up and I have been putting in 10-14 hour days on a regular basis, including on Saturday's to make sure the transition was flawless. You'd be surprised at the complexity behind moving a bank two blocks down the street, and doing it all in two days. Closed on Friday evening, open at the new location on Monday morning. Anyway, the new building has worked out about 85% of the inevitable kinks that come with opening a new location, but working through those issues and adding my new staff has allowed me to get back to a much more reasonable work schedule. That being said, I expect the blog updates to start coming about every 2 weeks now that Billy is nearly 6 months old.
Since its been nearly a month since the last entry, prepare for this one to be pretty extensive. First up is Billy's diet. We transitioned him to rice cereal about a month or so ago when he was just four months old. He spent the better part of his first feeding pushing that out of his mouth with his tongue, but by feeding number 2, the little guy was mouth wide open waiting for each spoon full. Gradually, week by week, we began adding new solid foods to his diet. First up was green beans. Apparently little Billy loves green beans. He would cry in between spoon fulls until you came near him with another scoop. Then he'll stop crying and open as wide as he can. Its pretty funny to watch actually. The next meal on tap was banana. He ate all of that right up without a problem, so Antoinette tried a real banana. She would give him a little squished up piece to see if he would eat it. No dice. He didn't want anything to do with it. So she took the entire banana, added some water, and blended both into a thinner banana paste. Then she put it in a bowl and fed that to him. He proceeded to eat the entire blended banana!!! Guess he likes bananas. The one item of baby food he doesn't seem to like, since he throws it up, is butternut squash. He's tried it twice and both times it has completely disagreed with him. He's also trying watered down juice and licking apples when Mom and Dad are eating one. Seems to love the sour taste of green apples. So far, like his Father, he's not a very picky eater.
Physically, Billy is developing quite well. On the scale at home, Billy is now nearly 16.5 lbs., which for a 5.5 month old, puts him in the 55th percentile in body weight. But its more than just weight that is changing for him. The other day we caught him with his socks off and one of them stuffed into his mouth. He was chewing on it. I'm pretty sure the issue is his new found ability to get his feet up to his head because we continuously catch him chewing on his toes. He's also nearly sitting on his own now. He can sit upright with his hands down in front of him for a minute or two, but eventually he keels over. He seems to have much more strength in his core, but his issue is balance now. He seems to topple after awhile, so we'll just keep working at it.
I think he's at least a couple months from crawling at this point. When on his belly, his knees still point outward and he's made no effort to get them underneath of himself. I'm assuming we're going to need to see him get on all fours before we actually see him use this position for any sort of locomotion. So for now, he gets around by rolling, and he's quite the roller. Especially when he wants something. If he's not engaged with something, he seems content to entertain himself by rolling around. Its quite common to see him 3-5 feet from where he started in a matter of minutes. That's a good 5-6 rolls, just seconds apart. His new thing is rolling into the dog, who likes to lay next to him when he's on the ground. I know that its inevitable that he's going to grab onto the dog's ears at some point and I have no idea how that's going to go over. My guess is the dog will just yelp and move, but I have to see that before I'm entirely comfortable with the notion. So for now, we watch the two of them whenever they are together. They really do seem to enjoy each other though.
Now that Billy is a little older, we've been getting him out of the house quite often. Aside from our 2-3 neighborhood walks (we try to go on when I'm not working), we've been taking him to the zoo every other weekend with our free zoo pass. When we're not at the zoo, we were getting him over to the pool which he absolutely loves. He'll play in the pool with you for an hour or more if you'll let him, so we go nice and early in the morning when nobody is there and the temperature is closer to 80-85 degrees outside instead of the 90-95 it will be hitting by noon. We've also screened in the back patio, which is now a pretty large 22 x 8 room with a 10 foot ceiling. Billy loves to sit out there with his Mother and I, free from the bugs that often accompany the sunset, and just enjoy the breeze. There's a ceiling fan out there, so whatever breeze that's blocked by the screen is more than made up for by the fan. And this time of year in Florida, the evenings are great. 70-75 degrees, little to no humidity, blue skies, and gentle breezes. You can't beat it. October and November are the best months in Jacksonville.
We also need to discuss Billy's mouth. This little attachment has gone through quite the overhaul since our last blog entry. He's using it for everything. While he still puts everything he can get his hands on in his mouth, he's also using it to give "kisses", or at least his version of "kisses". If you ask him for a kiss and you start kissing his cheeks, he turns toward you with his mouth as wide open as he can get it. Then he'll proceed to gum whatever part of your face he can clamp his mouth onto. Its pretty funny. He's also very snuggily at certain parts of the day. While he gets very excited when he sees me and starts to lean toward me as if he wants me to hold him, when he's with his Mother, he acts differently and attempts to snuggle up and nuzzle in there around her neck and face. Its very interesting how he really seems to treat the two of us differently. He has also figured out that his mouth is used for eating food, which we discussed earlier. But the biggest change regarding his mouth is that he is using it more to try and communicate. His vocalizations have become more complex and he's added a new sound into his little arsenal that sounds like "da da da da da da". He uses it now for everything in varying degrees of volume and inflection to indicate different needs. He's also begun screaming at everything with this ear piercing high pitched squeal. He unleashes that sucker wherever he is. Grocery stores, swimming pools, zoos, car rides, diaper changes, or just in routine play. He's got a mouth on him, that's for sure.
Among the most concerning developments for the little guy is this incessant desire to sleep on his belly. Every time you put him down, he rolls to his front. We are always concerned with SIDS and the unknowns surrounding it, so we have done what we can to prevent it from what is known. The #1 item on that list was putting the baby down on his back. Some facts about SIDS. Caucasian children are far less likely to suffer from this than African American children. Most of these deaths occur between birth and four months, although they do occur all the way up to 1 year. According to the Mayo Clinic, cases occurring in babies earlier than 1 month old and older than 6 months old are rare. Most of the cases occur in the Fall and Winter in places with colder climates. The number of children who die from SIDS in the US is about 1 in every 1,000 births. Based on these numbers, we figure that with Billy being Caucasian, over 4 months old, living in the South, and generally healthy, his chances have to be closer to about 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 20,000 at this point, and at that 6 month mark, probably closer to 1 in 50,000 or so, but that being said, we continue to put him down on his back and then check on him 20 minutes later to flip him onto his back once he's asleep. He won't stay that way all night, but for at least half of it and that makes me feel better. At one year, he can sleep standing on his head for all I care.
Finally, Billy's hand control is much better. He can grasp and reach for objects at will, even from a Tummy Time position. Unfortunately, that brings the dog into question again. We are trying to ease him in with the dog where his Mother and I are there for when the baby is grabbing and pinching at the dog. We can be there to keep him relaxed, which he pretty much is anyway.
The next two weeks are going to mark another transition period for little Billy. We are going to start the process of working him toward three major meals per day with two snack times in between. Right now, he's on more of a 5-6 meal schedule with maybe one solid snack meal somewhere during the day. That will not be an easy transition and should take about a month or so to complete. To complement those major meals, each of the big ones should be a combination of solid and liquid meals and his snacks should be liquid meals only. Since we are starting from a point of no consistent solid meals, it will be interesting to see how it goes.
Additionally, during that same stretch, we are going to start transitioning Billy's sleep schedule. He is still getting 8-10 hours when he first goes down, then he's up for a 20 minute pit stop of changing/feeding, followed by another 2-3 hours down. That's about 10-13 hours straight a night. The remaining portion of the day, approximately 12 hours, needs to broken up into three awake sessions and two nap sessions. The naps need to be about 2 hours a piece, which leaves about 8-9 hours of awake time during the day. That means he needs to be up for 3-4 hour windows during the day before each 2 hour nap. Now, of course all kids are different, so this may not work out as planned, but that doesn't mean its not a good idea to have a goal/plan to work toward and see how it shakes out. That is how we got him to sleep through the night so early. Set a goal and worked toward it. This will also likely take about a month or so to complete, by my estimation.
Some other developmental goals we are going to work on are sitting up, maybe balancing on all fours, and putting objects just out of reach and see how he does about reaching for those objects and pulling them close to himself.
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