Avyaan turned 5 months old yesterday. Cliched, yes, but time indeed is flying and it seems like it was only yesterday that we brought him home from the hospital, and before we know it, a few years may have passed.
I haven't been able to keep this blog as up to date as I would like. Some of that is due to my inherent laziness, some because I want to treat a blog post as a channel for coherent, structured thoughts and mostly because life, for the past few months, has been throwing one curveball after another. I won't go into my personal problems here as that is not why this blog exists. The primary purpose of this blog is to serve as a public journal of my memories of Avyaan growing up. So, going forward, I will try to treat entries here as quick, streams of consciousness kind of posts - less organized, but more frequent. I'm not sure how successful I'll be in achieving that end as I always end up trying to strive for some sort of structure to whatever I do, but try I must, lest I forget crucial memories and defeat the whole purpose of this blog.
With that in mind, I would like to document some of the new stuff he has been doing lately and some of the earlier behaviors he no longer exhibits.
New Sounds: Every couple of weeks or so, he has a new favorite sound that he can't make enough of. Current favorite sounds are variations of 'L', 'Bui', 'Grr', and imitating a sputtering motorcycle with his tongue out. Sometimes I will gently pat my fingers against his mouth and he will make a 'Wa' sound, resulting in a hilarious 'Wabawaba' pattern.
Switching Modes: He also seems to be switching modes every few weeks. He will go from super interactive to super observant. Right now he is in the observant mode. He doesn't talk much, only a couple of times a day during his high-energy bouts. He has pretty much stopped interacting with people on the video calls. I guess he has now figured out that the people on the phone screen are not really there, so he conveniently ignores them in favor of more interesting stuff in the immediate vicinity.
Assertiveness: He has become super assertive in the last few weeks. If he doesn't like something - the way you're holding him, the toy you've given him, the room where he is, etc., he will shout at the top of his voice, in the highest note he can hit, till he gets his way. While being assertive is good, sometimes I get concerned that it'll be difficult to teach him the difference between being assertive and being stubborn.
New Plays: We're having to constantly come up with new stuff to keep him entertained. Some activities are his all-time favorites - flying around the house in my arms in 'hanuman' pose, or, for the more westerly audience, the 'flying superman' pose. However, there is only so much flying you can do.
- He has discovered that if he moves his legs, he can go places. so every time we pick him up from lying position, he moves his legs in a running stance. We indulge him for a bit, but since he is still too young to be putting his full body weight on his legs, he is always firmly supported so that the weight is borne by our arms.
- He also wants to constantly climb us when sitting/standing facing us and, with support, can walk up and stand on our heads/faces. we are literally letting him 'सर चढ़ कर बैठना '
- He hasn't yet figured out the whole rolling over on his own and crawling thing, but with a little assistance, he can easily roll over from his back to his tummy and once on his tummy, immediately looks up and starts kicking vigorously. I believe he will be crawling everywhere in a few weeks and we will have to childproof the entire house!
- The latest hobby is to grab everything he can and put it in his mouth, favorites items being his fingers, my fingers, his blanket, his toys, teether, etc. Improved hand-eye coordination means that he can much more successfully grab things within his reach that earlier he could only flail his arms at. Needless to say, we are constantly washing and sanitizing everything as a result of this.
Eating Habits: We have moved on to a bigger bottle, now that he takes more per feeding, which means he now struggles to hold the bottle, something he had mastered with the smaller bottle. He still easily grabs the bottle when offered and takes it to the mouth, but isn't always successful in turning it the right way before putting it in. It never gets less entertaining to watch him do that though. He has also started playing with his feed. Sometimes he will take a mouthful and start gargling with it. Though the doctor has strictly prohibited from solids before 6 months of age, it doesn't stop him from longingly looking at us, and moving his mouth in tandem with ours when we are having our meals. Sometimes we will give him a piece fo fruit to lick. So far we have found that he loves mangoes and peaches, but not bananas. We can't wait for one more month to pass so we can formally start him on different solids.
Changing Diapers: He now understands when his diaper is being changed and unlike earlier, when he would scream his lungs out, now calmly lets you clean him. One side effect of this is that he goes into play mode after every diaper change, so we have to be mindful of changing him before putting him down for the night because if we have to change him in the middle of the night, we have to be ready to play for at least an hour after that.
Sleeping Patterns: Thankfully, he now sleeps longer hours at night and on most nights, will wake up only once or twice for feeding and will quickly go back to sleep once done. But this comes at the cost of his daytime naps. Even when he is tired during the day, it takes forever for him to fall asleep, and when asleep, he usually wakes up within an hour. There are times when he wakes up in less time than it took to put him to sleep! Another thing is that earlier he used to fall asleep with a lullaby or a simple 'shhh' noise that you make. No longer! Now he needs stories, something Prajakta is much better at than me. I discovered a podcast on Spotify where the host reads short 5-minute stories, so I just hit play on it while I rock him to sleep.
Bath Time: He graduated from the 'newborn sling' to the 'infant side' of his bathtub a couple of months ago, but it is only now that he has truly started enjoying his time in the water, especially after we got him a rubber ducky. Whether, and for how long, he plays in the water, is totally dependent on how sleepy/hungry he is before we take him for his bath though.
Peekaboo: He has figured out the whole peekaboo thing. He will intentionally cover his face with whatever cloth he may be playing with, take it off, and smile at you.
I'm sure there's a bunch of other stuff that I am forgetting, but I'll now switch gears to some of the things he doesn't do anymore and that I miss:
- Bunny Hands: Whenever feeding, the moment the bottle went into his mouth, his hands used to reflexively end up under his chin, not very different from a hopping bunny! Now he simply grabs his bottle and starts gulping., which is cute and entertaining in its own way, but not quite the same.
- Environment Scanning: When he was much smaller and could barely hold his head steady, propping him up on your shoulder meant only one thing - he would lift his head up, make an 'O' with his mouth and constantly scan the environment from left to right and back, in slow, bouncy movements. He doesn't do that anymore. Now, he simply looks in the direction he wants to go and tries to leap, knowing that the person holding him, will take care of the rest.
- Brrrrr: Until a few weeks ago, his favorite sound was a 'brrrr' noise he made with his pursed lips. Now that he has discovered new, more complex sounds, he doesn't seem to care about making the earlier sounds.
- Laughing: When he first discovered laughing, it would only take a small cue for him to burst out into a full-hearted giggle, the no-worry-in-the-world, everything-is-awesome, I-am-happy-and-I-know-it, infectious laugh that will force you to forget all your worldly woes and laugh along. Now he is much pickier and needs to find something truly funny before he will reward you with his laughter. He does flash a 100W smile much more frequently, so that's good.
Again, there may be lots of stuff I am forgetting, but in the spirit of not trying to make a post perfect and exhaustive, I will end here and will hopefully come back soon with a new post.
