Tommy's Latest Accomplishments

Our sweet drooling and soggy Tommy

In the day to day action for Tommy, we've been going to the swimming pool every morning for Karina's swimming lesson. Tommy usually falls asleep shortly after we arrive, naps for an hour or more and then has a bottle while Karina has class and then stays to play with other kids in the toddler pool.

Tommy chillin' at the pool...sporting one of his rompers that Tom always thinks looks like a 1940's (?) style bathing suit!

Also, if you look closely you can see he has a nice scab in between his eyebrows where he gouged himself (again!)with his fingernail...I swear his nails are more dangerous when trimmed!
He has these scratches so often one would think we have a psychotic cat that we regularly let loose on him!

Just this week Tommy has really made strides towards sitting up on his own. This is a little surprising because in general Tommy prefers to stand or lay over sitting and I often joke that he's not going to sit or crawl, but he's just going to start walking in a couple of months!

Tommy expressing his general distaste for sitting, especially while he lacks the stomach muscles to keep his torso from gradually falling down to touch the floor...as depicted in this photo.

Here he is proving me wrong as he is sitting without any support.

And here he is a few seconds later falling to the floor!
Don't worry, I caught him...
...and still got the photo! What a mom!

In regards to general body functions, Tommy continues to have a drippy right eye...it seems the blocked tear duct hasn't cleared yet, and although he has been drooling for a couple of months already it's getting to the point of ridiculousness. He can't keep a shirt dry for more than half an hour without a bib on. I swear if one could get dehydrated from drooling, he's going to do it!

Our super sweet Tommy asleep on the Boppy
after nursing with Mommy

He also has moved into a new stage of pooping. While he used to have the very typical multiple small bowel movements each day, sometime over the past month we began noticing that days...and I truly mean days (almost 72 hours one time)...had passed without one poopy diaper! He would be so tight in the tummy and even a bit irritable, and we would be dreading the inevitable "blow out" just hoping it would happen when a clothing change would be quickly possible. The likelihood of messiness is however compounded by the fact that baby poop seems to defy the laws of gravity and actually runs upward! Does anyone know how this is possible! Luckily the pattern seems to have smoothed out over time and he's now on more of a once a day schedule.

Tommy practicing his leg lifting/lowering technique
by grabbing both toes and then trying
to hold on to them while kicking violently!

On the gross motor skills front, Tommy can roll over more readily now, but still prefers to be on his back or standing up. He is however really moving around on his back in his crib so much that we had to take the "pillow" head rest out of the bed. When I've peeked in to see what he's doing, he seems to move around by repeatedly lifting his legs up and banging them down, sometimes straight out but other times a bit to the side so that he gradually bounces and jostles himself around the crib. He is able to travel so far using this method that his head is never cradled in his head rest when we come in to get him after his naps and often he's lying perpendicular to his original position! This was surprising to us because Karina stayed quite immobile until she was 9-12 months old...she must have liked laying still on her back more than Tommy does! But as result we've had to get out the sleep sacks, so Tommy can have a safe blanket on cool nights.

Tommy reaching for his mobile animals with hands and feet

Tommy's also been working really hard at grabbing things, but again with the focus on the "over-his-head-and-using-his-legs-too" kind of grabbing...as illustrated in the photo. This is not to say that he's not interested in reaching for things in front of him, because when he sits or lays in bed with me and Karina on nights that Tom isn't home for her bedtime, he loves to have a book to hold and chew on...much to Karina's dismay!