My mother regularly chides me for not keeping her updated on all the details of every new thing that Kavya is doing RIGHT NOW. So, for those similarly frustrated among you, here are a few things Kavi's been doing:
- She holds up her own bottle. Not completely consistently, and often she drops it pretty quickly and wails in frustration, but sometimes she'll drink an entire four ounces, all on her own. It's amazing!
- She is starting to actually recognize her toys. She has a butterfly-shaped book that she plays with quietly for a half hour or so most mornings, and a purple monster (pictured right) that she seems be growing fond of. This means that mommy has only a small window of time to get rid of all the toys that she finds particularly unaesthetic, before baby gets really attached to them... :-)
- Kavya rolls and rolls and rolls. If you put her down on her back now, and walk away, there is a good chance that you will return five minutes later to find that she has rolled over onto her stomach, then onto her back, then onto her stomach again, and is complaining that the arching bar of the play mat is impeding her future rolling progress. If our carpet were cleaner, I would just put her down at one edge and see how far she rolled before she got tired. Hmmm....maybe I'll put down a couple of sheets and try it. Babies are for experimenting with.
- She laughs out loud pretty often now, especially in the mornings. Most consistently we can get laughs if we mock-chomp around her armpit, which must be a bit ticklish. But Kavi is also pretty amused when mommy pretends to eat baby's hand, or foot, or ear. Silly mommy!
- She can almost, almost jam her pacifier back in her mouth. This must be deeply frustrating for her, because she grabs it and accidentally pulls it out, and then spends quite a bit of time trying to shove it back into her mouth, in every orientation but the correct one. Poor munchkin.
- Kavi tasted a tiny bit of banana on Sunday, and did not spit it out, though she did make a funny face. We're going to try a real solids meal sometime this week, I think, some infant rice cereal. We'll see how it goes.
- She is outgrowing her 3-6 month clothes. Yesterday I sorted through a whole bunch of them, putting a few of my favorites away for a possible future child, and putting the rest in the giveaway pile. Heather took some, and I'm hoping to pass the rest to Kev's sister Susan and/or Nadya soon. Kavya's still just a bit over five months old, but she's a long baby at the moment. In particularly, she's kicking her way out of her sleepers -- ten minutes in a sleeper and she's likely to have kicked one leg entirely free, if not both. Snaps are no match for her kicking power!
- She may be finally developing some stranger-danger. Up until now, Kavi was perfectly happy to go to anyone who wanted to hold her. But this weekend I was at Jed's, and tried to hand her first to Kam, and then to Jed, and no dice! Kavi immediately started wailing and giving me this appalling look. This look that clearly said, "Mommy, mommy, how can you abandon me? Have I been a bad little girl? Why else would you do this to meeeeee???" Enough to break your heart, that look, and so I took her back, at which point she promptly calmed down. Eep. I was terrified that she would react the same way to Kevin and/or Mya, but thankfully, she seems just fine with both of them. If she starts demanding mommy all the time, that will make no one happy, I promise you. Hopefully she'll get over this quickly, as ammama and her aunties are seeing her next week and will be very distressed if she won't go to them!