Linnaeus 10.2

Sprout is growing in leaps & bounds, weighing in at exactly 20 pounds on Monday. He's gone from hovering around the 15th percentile to just under the 50th. He never actually lost any weight, but I still freaked out at his two short weight-gain plateaus when they happened. I knew he was fine because he was following that line on the growth chart, but I still wished he'd chub up a bit. So I've gotten my wish. This also means that he looks even more like me--I had the same chipmunk cheeks at his age. Funny how he's gone from looking like Oli to looking more like me in the span of a few months.

He's still a little tall for his age, at two foot five & a half. That puts him at the 76th percentile. Seems like a good number to stay at--he could be taller than the average person without necessarily having to shop in special stores or stoop through doorways when he's full-grown. I still can't really imagine having a teenager or *gasp* an adult son. I still occasionally find myself looking at him from across the room & being shocked that this little person is in my life now. He's starting to look much less like a baby & more like a little boy now, with all the hair & particularly when he's wearing a t-shirt & pants.

His head continues to approach melon size: at 18.5 inches, he's at the 87th percentile for his age. It doesn't seem too big to me, but when I see him with other babies his age, his head does look pretty big, especially with his mop of blond hair. When I think about how much he's grown, I'm astonished that it could all happen in so few months. I'm also a bit shocked to realize that his head circumference is only four inches smaller than mine. I am so grateful he has grown a large noggin since birth & it was just average sized when I squeezed him out. Whew!

On the food front, Sprout is still eating like a champ. He prefers mushy food that he can just suck back with minimal effort, like yams, bananas, melon, pear, potatoes, but he enjoys picking up tiny things. His latest new food: raisins. He seems to be gumming them at the sides of his mouth where he'll eventually have molars. Without giving you an image that will put you off eating, I'll just say that I can tell he's breaking his food down better. 

He seems to be shifting from two naps a day to one. Lately he's refused to go to sleep around 11, as he used to, instead staying awake until 1 or 2pm. He often only sleeps one cycle, which is 40 minutes, so he's a pretty tired boy once evening rolls around. I think it'll work great if he could just stay asleep for at least an hour & a half like he did yesterday.

His crawling is slowly evolving. He's moved from 'spidermanning' to commando crawling now, using his elbows & forearms to pull himself along. He also gets up on his hands & knees fairly often, rocking & trying to will himself forward. Yesterday he pulled himself up on the couch. He was on one foot & one knee, unbalanced, so he fell over, clocking his head on the floor. Poor kid is going to be full of bruises by the time he actually gets good at walking.

We've finally dropped the nighttime bottle top-up. I was whittling it down by 10mL every night or so, but decided once we got down to 50mL just to quit at that point. So last night, I nursed Sprout down & put him to bed. He woke up, fussed & seemed to want more when I popped him off, so we had to do it twice, but he did get to sleep after a few minutes. He did wake up around 2:30am for a half hour or so, but that happens every week or so, it seems, so I don't think it was related to the bottle. We have one unopened canister of formula left over, as we bought a bunch on sale. I guess we'll have to donate it to the food bank. I'm pretty happy to be finally done with formula!