It's been a while since we reported just on Adlai's doings and four-month-old Adlai is a pretty interesting little guy. First off, he's REALLY happy. Sure, I'm biased, but I'm not sure I've come across such a happy baby. He's not that kind of quiet smiley observant happy, he's full bodied squealing loudly like-a-teenage-girl-at-a-rock-concert happy. When I come home from work he wraps his arms around my neck, squeals loudly, and attacks my shoulders with his open mouth. That's his gentle way of saying "BOOBS. PLEASE. NOW."
He's also pretty clever. Grandmother put him down for a nap last week and came back to find that he had kicked out of his blanket, rotated to face his musical crib aquarium, and was kicking the shell which turns the music on and off. At first we were dubious that this was intentional but a week later (after almost always finding him over in that side of the crib with his feet kicking the same toy) we're sure he wants the music on and has taken matters into his own hands (or, rather, feet).
We've been feeding him rice or oatmeal cereal for three weeks now and often it seems like his stomach is a bottomless pit. He easily makes it through a cup of powder mixed with six ounces of formula. Since servings are supposed to be measured in tablespoons, not cups, we're impressed by his intake. And food can't be spooned in fast enough - between spoonfuls he opens his mouth as wide as possible and yells if, heaven forbid, I should take a bite of my own food before giving him another. He also gets upset watching us eat breakfast and lunch - times when he doesn't get his bowl of "real" food. Unfortuantely, he also drinks a ton so the pump and I have become fast friends once again. We started the food because his doctor suggested he needed some more calories to fatten him up but, amazingly enough, he doesn't seem to have bulked up at all. He does, however, appear to be getting taller by the second. One of these weeks he is going to grow right out of his special "for tall babies" infant car seat as well as his swing and his bouncy chair.
He's heavy into the teething at this point and almost always has his entire fist in his mouth. He finds sounds funny - the shaking ice last Sunday was falling-over-funny as were the old fashioned car horns in the Mountain View Spring Parade on Saturday. One of the drivers, noticing his delight at the sound, gave Adlai his own honk as he drove past. He's getting better at holding and shaking his own toys but finds his animated big brother Simon the ultimate in entertainment. Over the past few days he has started to make motions toward crawling. He can lift his rear end up and sit on his knees or prop himself up on his straightened arms but not both at the same time and he can't do either for very long. He's not much of a bouncer but prefers to rotate his legs in the air as if running or, if standing, he stomps his feet forward as if he's going to proudly walk right over to the action on his own. Since Simon didn't start crawling until six months, we're pretty sure we have a at least a month and a half before we need to worry about mobility. It does seem like time is flying this time around.
