(Click on the thumbnails below to see the BIG versions).
Baby Kessel is now 10 months old, and he has become a real Bruiser. You'll recall that the munchkin was fluctuating between the 90th and 95th percentile in weight since birth, but -- oh no! -- at his December checkup he was down to the 75th percentile. That's barely one standard deviation above average, so Jesse knew something had to be done. The baby then undertook a diet of bread, formula, and as much food as he wanted every meal, and now he is back up to 99th percentile!! The doctor had to check the scale twice because his weight was off the percentile chart!!!! He weighs 23 lbs, as much as some 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds (he's wearing clothes now that Coco wore at age 2).
We took Kessel to a Chinese New Year's dinner in Chinatown, and discovered that he was born in the Year of the Ox (that's last year in Chinese time). His western zodiacal sign is Taurus, so he is now known as The Bull's Bull. (By this same method, Jesse is The Cancerous Rat and Eljay is a canine goat.
His greatest Feat Of Strength is this: you know how in the dishwasher there's the upper rack and the lower rack, and you can have the upper rack out with the lower rack in, so it overhangs the door by about a foot-and-a-half? The munchkin likes climbing up on the dishwasher door and exploring for spoons, cups, and whatnot. One day, we had the upper rack overhanging as described above and the munchkin grabbed the upper rack (intrigued by the rackful of spent bottles, no doubt) and he grabbed the rack and PULLED HIMSELF UP! ALL THE WAY UP! Like a chin up, lifting his entire body weight, and ending up standing on the door.
He's not quite so advanced in verbal abilities as he is in physical abilities. Right now he has five or six words in his vocabulary:
That's about it on the vocabulary front. We hope for more at the next Baby Update.
However, he responds to a number of other words:
If you do: What he does:
-- say "Where's the Kitty?" -- he looks at the floor
(where Esme is)
-- sing "Singing in the Rain" -- looks out the window
(we sing it a lot)
-- sing "Mr. Sandman" -- sucks thumb and snuggles in
(if he's tired)
-- sing "Rock a bye baby" -- he cries because
he knows it's bedtime
-- ask "where's your piggies" -- looks at his toes
(we play Piggies a lot)
-- say "Where's Mama?" -- looks at Eljay
Also works sometimes for "Where's Grammy", "Where's Johnny", "Where's Ba", "Where's Spike", and "Where's Coco".
But the Big Thing is Pattycake. Baby Kessel now plays pattycake, by clapping his hands while we chant the famous lines. He's pretty good at clapping, i.e., his hands actually meet in the middle and make a little bit of noise. It's very cute.
The other big thing is HE PLAYS BALL! If you toss him a ball, he throws the ball back to you. He has quite an arm, able to throw upwards of two feet, and his aim is pretty good for someone who'e only been throwing for a few days. He loves this game, which is inherited from his Mom, who, you might know, would have been the first girl in the Little Leagues except that back in the Bad Ol' Days girls weren't allowed in Little League.
He also likes hanging upside down. And playing pattycake while hanging upside down, too. When we hold him upright, he flings himself backwards so he's half upside down, insisting that he be held fully upside down. He likes to be carried up the stairs that way, or flung onto the bed and thrown around -- that makes him laugh uncontrollably. He makes mommy hysterical regularly (with laughter, not hysterics) and is constantly chuckling at her antics. This makes mommy feel really funny and interesting.
Kessel plays piano, but we reported that in the last Baby Update. He also plays drums now -- he enjoys most whapping the bass drum. We take out a bunch of pots and pans and hit them with spoons, but Kessel likes barehanding the bass drum instead of using those tricky spoons.
But the Big Thing is Pattycake. Baby Kessel now plays pattycake, by clapping his hands while we chant the famous lines. He's pretty good at clapping, i.e., his hands actually meet in the middle and make a little bit of noise. It's very cute.
The other big thing is HE PLAYS BALL! If you toss him a ball, he throws the ball back to you. He has quite an arm, able to throw upwards of two feet, and his aim is pretty good for someone who'e only been throwing for a few days. He loves this game, which is inherited from his Mom, who, you might know, would have been the first girl in the Little Leagues except that back in the Bad Ol' Days girls weren't allowed in Little League.
He also likes hanging upside down. And playing pattycake while hanging upside down, too. When we hold him upright, he flings himself backwards so he's half upside down, insisting that he be held fully upside down. He likes to be carried up the stairs that way, or flung onto the bed and thrown around -- that makes him laugh uncontrollably. He makes mommy hysterical regularly (with laughter, not hysterics) and is constantly chuckling at her antics. This makes mommy feel really funny and interesting.
Kessel plays piano, but we reported that in the last Baby Update. He also plays drums now -- he enjoys most whapping the bass drum. We take out a bunch of pots and pans and hit them with spoons, but Kessel likes barehanding the bass drum instead of using those tricky spoons.
-- As of this week, he has 6 teeth -- four on top and 2 on the bottom. He grinds them together very noisily and annoyingly, which we hope is a quickly passing phase.
-- Last weekend: He went on the swing at the playground for the first time -- wow! he liked it! the higher the better! Giggles galore! The slide, on the other hand, was not quite so popular -- a few more months for that.
-- 2 weeks ago: Climbed an entire staircase on his own (with me behind him just in case) ON THE FIRST TRY. We're still trying to persuade him to go backwards down the stairs instead of attempting it head first.
-- 3 weeks ago: He had been pulling books off of shelves for a while. But three weeks ago, for the first time, he started putting them back!! Evidently his interest was not in having them off the shelves, but in rearranging them in some particular way.
-- 4 weeks ago: Crawls regularly on his hands and knees (that's a step up from dragging his legs behind him) and pulls himself up on to things (including your leg) and then "cruises" to other nearby things (that's another step towards walking). He can stand alone for two seconds.
-- 5+ weeks ago: Started rejecting strangers. This was heartbreaking to my mom, who he doesn't see often enough to consider a non-stranger, but she knows it's a phase he'll get through pretty soon. He wouldn't let my buddy Matt even feed him -- "I don't want a bottle from him!" Uncle Peter (my bro) was OK, presumably because he smells like daddy. Cora, our babysitter, makes him scream and scream. If he doesn't see mommy or daddy, it will never stop, never stop, never stop.
That's all the Baby News. He's in "auditory verbal therapy" now, which means we focus on getting him to associate sounds with objects, and then later focus on particular sounds. It's a pretty trip to gloucester every week and he should get used to therapists. He's wearing his hearing aids every day now, although he pulls them off a lot. We lost one last Wednesday and spent an hour searching outdoors and in, then Eljay found them under the bass drum. Jesse was thankfully at work for this entire incident. (yes, we have hearing aid loss insurance).
Spike and Coco still get along splendidly with the baby. He pulls Coco's hair and makes her scream sometimes, but she likes playing with him on the trampoline and playing ball and making him laugh. Spike loves having a baby brother and is the world's best big bro', it seems, always paying attention and watching out for him, or tormenting him by holding his bottle an inch higher than he can reach it.
Next news, we think he'll be walking and maybe speaking a few more words....
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