4 Months Old!

Jo is 4 months old today (His Grandmom, sweetly, called to wish him a happy 4 month birthday. And his mommies made sure to have some cake.) This picture of him was taken a few days ago, and it's one of my new favorites. I can see in it the little boy he will become.


Some highlights of life with Jo:

*His favorite new trick is blowing raspberries. He takes a deep breath, purses his lips, sometimes pokes his tongue out slightly, and blows. It makes a very satisfying noise, and baby and mommy/mama get sprayed generously. He does this all. the. time.

*He rolls from side to side, and is trying really hard to sit up. He can almost do it by himself.

*He has stopped hating tummy time, and enjoys pushing himself up. He still doesn't like the position for prolonged periods of time, but the pushing up is new and exciting. We still sing "Eye of the Baby" and the theme from "Rocky" during Tummy Time. ("Rising up, back on the Gymini...Just a baby and his will to survive..." I'll spare you the rest.)

*He loves to play with toys, including rattles, keys, and small stuffed animals. Oh, and books. The tasty kind.

*Today we got out his highchair seat for the first time. Dr. Rightwing suggests that during the fifth month, babies might enjoy sitting in a highchair and playing with small blocks on a tray. Since we had both the highchair and the small blocks we gave it a try. He enjoyed it for about five minutes, which was long enough to get some adorable pictures. He looks like such a big boy to me when he's sitting in his highchair.


*We took him to an infant massage class yesterday, and of all the babies his age (most were younger, one was just 18 days old!) he was by far the wiggliest and most active. We are in for it, I think.

*Today I finally got out my children's music collection to share with him. It's a combination of records from my own childhood that I've put on cassette, and cassettes I've collected over the years through my work in children's radio. Co has a lot of great music she's downloaded for him, and has wonderful playlists on her computer that he really enjoys. My collection is harder to access because (I realized today) I've been tending it for twenty years, so the lion's share is on cassette rather than CD (and I don't do computer, for music, but that's another whole post). So today I pulled the relevant cassettes out of their alphabetically/chronologically organized casette holders and put them in a box by the stereo so I'll be able to grab them easily. I've already made him a section on our CD rack. (Only for my sweet Jo would I interrupt my musical organizational systems.) All of which is to say that, today, I played him songs from my childhood, and tapes I've had since I was in my twenties, and even my teens, thinking that someday, someday, I would play them for my own child. I had tears in my eyes.

*His favorite song -- he grins when you start to sing it -- is "I Had A Rooster."

Here's his four month photo with that other Flipper. This picture also marks the first time we've successfully caught a smile on camera. (The red-eye reduction light gives him the deer-in-headlights stare you see in most of our flickr photos.)