Milestone Minutiae

- anyone eating anything (dogs included) - the beam of a flashlight moving on the bedroom wall in the middle of the night - wiggly fingers (also in the middle of the night) - the Rubik's cube, particularly when David is solving it

Luke has been watching us carefully while we eat for quite a while. We've been putting him in the high chair with toys during dinner, and so far that's been keeping him happy. Last night he was sitting in David's lap after dinner and nabbed a fistful of spaghetti. I had seen it coming, so the mess was avoided, and we'll never know what his true intentions were. Today at lunch, I was cutting some chicken breast for Emmett with Luke in my lap. In a flash, he grabbed a piece and immediately pulled it to his mouth and started gumming it. Equally quickly, I took it back. Maybe he was planning to eat that spaghetti. They say that begging is a sign of readiness for solid foods. I wonder what food stealing means.

This visit happened when he was just a week and a half shy of 5 months (sorry it's taken so long to get it posted!). Height: 25 3/4 inches Weight: 15 pounds 6 ounces Head circumference: 43 1/4 cm Height and head circumference are about 75th percentile, weight is around 50th (if I recall correctly). I do have a weight for Emmett around five months - he was 18 pounds! Emmett's four month length was 26 1/2 inches. Head circumference looks like it' s caught up, though - Emmett's four month head circumference was 43cm. I have some doubts about that measurement, but looking at his growth over time, it can't be wrong by more than 1/2 cm or so.

Luke can rotate himself in circles now. I've seen him do it on his belly - today he did a 270. I'm pretty sure he can do it on his back, too. Last night I thought he was hitting my face with his hands, but when I finally woke up enough to stop him, I discovered that he'd been kicking me.

Our swing-set is near a few fruit trees. Emmett has noticed that while he swings, the sun seems to move back and forth behind the trees, too. He wants to know how the sun knows he's swinging.

We've been having some rough nights. Sometimes, Luke just seems inconsolable. David noticed that when he's putting Luke back to sleep, it seems Luke is actually crying in his sleep. It seems like a stretch given all the noise he makes, but when he wakes up and looks around, he'll quickly settle down to sleep again. I noticed a similar phenomenon at night. Luke would be very upset and refuse to nurse. Eventually, I'd decide I might as well change his diaper. As soon as the light would come on, he'd settle down. When we went back to bed, he wasn't fussy anymore. Armed with the "fussy sleeper" theory, I've started turning on lights and waking Luke up when he fusses at night. So far, it seems to work. UPDATE: Last night, it worked again. As soon as Luke started fussing, I turned on a light and held him upright. He blinked a few times, looked around, and then settled back down to nurse and sleep.

Spit-up is fluorescent. Ask me how I know. (It's not that exciting - we went to a skating rink today that has black lights.)

Right now, Emmett reads just as well forwards as well as backwards, and doesn't even seem clear on the difference. Today at lunch he was reading signs in a fast-food restaurant window from the inside. When we told them that they were backwards he actually denied it. I expect at some point, his forwards reading will surpass his backwards reading...

"When I grow up, we'll have more money because I'll have a job, too." When I explained that when he grows up, he'll have his own place to live too, he just looked perplexed.

Luke has mastered the art of fussing while he's nursing. It's quite a trick - he actively nurses, swallows, and makes squealing angry noises all at the same time. He had some shots yesterday, so today (as with the last time) we've got fever and grouchiness. I'll post the four-and-a-half-month stats later.

Emmett is now a reader. He reads "easy readers" with simple sentences of about 5-10 words per page. He remembers words he's previously encountered (like tentacle) when they appear a few pages later. He still has a tendency to look at the first letter of a word and start guessing (whole language folks would love him), and he oddly inserts "l" sounds in lots of places they do not belong. But yesterday, for the first time, he picked up a book and read it (aloud) to himself. Just for fun. It was "Caps for Sale," a book we've read a lot so it's familiar to him, but it's long and has lots more words than anything else he's read. He kept looking up and saying "Isn't this a great story?"

Luke has discovered that noise = being held. Screams appropriate for a horror flick work particularly well. It's getting more difficult to make dinner...

Sometimes, when Emmett does something strange or impressive, we'll ask where he learned how to do it. Tonight he was playing with the string on a helium balloon, wrapping it around his arm and holding the balloon with his elbow. When asked, he said, "I learned it in college!"

Cakes are tough to bake at altitude. We had a little birthday party for Emmett last night with he neighbors. Even with an altitude-adjusted cake recipe from The Joy of Cooking, the cake was still a bit strange. It was very fragile and crumbled when I tried to move a piece to a plate. Fortunately it tasted great. Emmett's idea of strawberries in the filling of a chocolate cake was a good one, as was Rebecca's suggestion of adding strawberry flavor to the whipped cream for the filling. (Rebecca is my cake consultant.) Clearly, I need some practice with cakes up here before I'll get a recipe I really like. My birthday is the next one coming up, so at breakfast today, I wondered aloud what kind of cake I'd make for my birthday. David said, "Maybe I should make a cake for your birthday." Emmett laughed a hearty laugh, as though David had told a joke. "But dad," he said, "You don't know how to cook !" We quickly pointed out th