To Calvin, who is six months old today!

Well, Calvin, you are now a half a year old!  The time is just going too fast.  The past month brought wonderful advancements, but it also brought some challenges for you and for your parents.  For the first few weeks of the month you struggled with your acid reflux, eventually leading to you losing an entire pound!  After juggling your medications you are now doing much better, but this will be the first month that you have not gained any weight.  What you have not gained in size, though, you continue to make up for in your other advancements!  Last month you realized how much you enjoyed standing to play, and this month you have learned how to push and pull yourself into that favorite play position!  You have also started to travel!  Thankfully you don't get very far, but you can crawl, in your own creeping sort of way, for very short distances.  You will be able to go much farther as soon as you figure out how to hold your head up off the ground while you are moving!  But our favorite new trick of yours is your new ability to play peek-a-boo!  For months we have played this game with you, covering our faces and then surprising you to make you laugh, but just two days ago you started covering your own face and waiting for us to ask "where's Calvin?" before uncovering and laughing up a storm!  It is so wonderful to have you engage with us this way, and we see this as a very fun milestone!

This past month has been very special to us for another reason, too:  it held the start to this year's holiday season with Thanksgiving and the start of Advent.  This is our favorite time of year, and now we get to share it with you, introducing you to the traditions, spirit, and love of the season.  We had a beautiful Thanksgiving, and decorated the house for the Christmas season.  You were awed by the lights on the tree, and seem to love singing carols with your parents every night (mostly you love sitting on your father's lap and banging along on the keys while he plays the piano).  You don't even seem to mind the cold air!  This season is not just new to you, it also feels new to us because it holds such a special new meaning to us now that you are here.  We have so much to be thankful for!

Two-way play

After nearly 6 months of one way play, our son is finally joining in the fun.  Oh sure, in the past he would grab, chew, and throw his toys, laugh at his toys, and even laugh in response to our antics, but we still consider this one way play.  After all, we would be practically standing on our heads to elicit said laughter, while Mr. Calvin was simply a laughing lump of baby.  Don't get us wrong, those days clearly beat out the days when he didn't even acknowledge our existence (a trait that is sure to return in about 15 years), but they don't hold a candle to the new and improved Calvin, now with real interactive mode so that he will actually take part in the play, rather than just laugh while watching.  Go ahead...laugh while you're watching!

Thank you Mr. Esophagus

It's been a rough couple of weeks in the Ophoff home.  Calvin's pediatrician decided to change the dose on his Zantac - cutting it nearly in half.  By the end of the first week following the poor kid was pretty cranky, but by the end of the second week he was downright miserable, so we complained and the doctor gave a script for Prevacid capsules, the insides of which were to be dissolved, as the nurse told us, in his breastmilk.  Ha ha ha.  Over the weekend we tried everything - the little pellets just would not disappear into any amount breastmilk and getting them down his throat was not nearly as easy as getting them stuck to the side of the medicine dropper, the spoon, his face, his bib, our hands.  He was getting maybe half of the medicine, which is why he was still a bear when Cortney called back yesterday morning and a different nurse told her to try water instead (never mind that breastmilk is 90% water).  After a polite but frustrated conversation we finally scored an appointment with the doctor in the afternoon.  The look on his face when Cortney told him the pellets didn't seem to dissolve was near priceless.  No, he said, they aren't meant to dissolve, you put them on his food.  Ahhh...and therein lies the problem.  We  had diligently been waiting for 6 months, as recommended by the AAP, and countless other organizations, and the nurse who had told us to dissolve the pellets was apparently visiting from another planet.  In cases like these, the doctor told us, it is going to be better for the patient to start a little early on solids so as to get him the medicine and give him a little more in his tummy to weigh down his milk (they make dissolvable Prevacid, by the way, but it has Aspartame, aka Nutrasweet, in it, and babies just don't need that). 

And that is how we came to this morning, with mom preparing whole grain brown rice cereal and dad giving the wee one a pep talk that went something like this: "it's a one way hatch!  Food goes in and it doesn't come out!  Mr. Esophagus is our friend!"  But let us tell you, the esophagus isn't the problem it's the tongue.  All in all the first feeding went very well!  Calvin even seemed to enjoy it.  More than a couple of times he reached for the spoon and pulled Cortney's hand to his mouth, but every other spoonful or so would be pushed back out by the tongue.  We realize that it is a learning process - for all of us.  We think it is also a bib destroying process.  The good news is, we all had fun, and he got probably 95% of the medicine, which was the whole reason we had to start this now anyway.  First feeding?  We'll count it as a success.

Slow down this horse!

Calvin continues to learn and try new things.  Tonight he was reclining in the bath and surprised us with a whole  new trick - first he pulled himself up to a sitting position (not a new trick), then he pulled himself further into a squatting position (that's a new trick), and then he pushed himself into a wobbly standing position (definitely a brand new trick)!  We don't have a picture of the standing, only the squatting, because who has hands for a camera when they are trying to keep a 5 1/2 month old from toppling over because they shouldn't be standing on their own yet?!?  And yesterday afternoon he traveled over 4 feet in fits and starts of crawling, too.  In fact, he's been so active lately that at an impromptu doctor appointment today they logged him as actually having lost 1/4 of a pound, taking him back down to 16 3/4 lbs and a hair shy of 27 inches.  Of course, that weight loss may better be blamed on the trouble he has been having with his reflux, which was the reason for today's pediatrician appointment.  But we will go into that further when we post tomorrow about our success or lack thereof with Calvin's first try with solid foods.  Yup, you read right.  Much to our chagrin we will, based on the doctor's orders, be starting solids prior to our six month goal.  Look out kitchen, here we come.  More on this tomorrow.

New developments

It would seem that Calvin has a few new tricks up his sleeve.  It's possible that he is starting to teethe.  Either that or he's been watching the dogs too closely, which is a distinct possibility.  Either way, over the past week he has been uncharacteristically fussy, and has become absolutely obsessed with chewing everything.  It's true that he has always gummed everything in his path, but lately it's gone from gumming to gnawing.  And when he doesn't have an object to gnaw on he simply sucks his own lips up and works on those, giving him a very different and not altogether humorless new look.  He does it so often that we're not sure we know what he looks like anymore - either his lips are in his mouth or something else is!  There are no signs of teeth at all yet, but we wonder if it's just a matter of time. 

The other new thing that he is doing is a little more exciting.  This morning for the first time he started trying to crawl.  He didn't get anywhere, mind you, but he was clearly trying all the same.  It kind of took us by surprise because there was no sign of this prior to this morning's tummy time, but suddenly today that is all he will do while on his tummy.  He's not efficient because he hasn't figured out how to lift his head and crawl with his legs at the same time, so while the legs are going like crazy his face is anchored to the floor.  Poor kid.  Although it could still be months before he crawls for real (he is only 5 months), suddenly we are feeling less confident about the Christmas tree.