BabyD at almost 5months

If there is one thing that I can really say that I have learned from pregnancy and after the birth of BabyD ,then it is that I have learned to love and respect my parents even more than I have ever loved them before. It is really amazing how they managed to bring us up so well! I realise this every day, every hour of the day that I spend with BabyD. I pray I raise him well but as the days pass by and D learns new things I find myself really wondering...

BabyD is learning many new things. He now turns over more easily and is practising his pre-crawling and he is getting curious about the world around him. I know that moving forward on his tummy doesn't make him 'mobile' but I am already facing trouble. I can't leave him on the bed or on the carpet or even his rocker. He has learned to get out of his rocker and roll off the bed and when he is on the carpet, although he still doesn't have a pincer grip, he still manages to grab something or the other. Everything edible or otherwise goes into his mouth. He doesn't care if it fits into his mouth or not, he just has to try and have a taste. Sometimes I find it funny to watch him so desperately trying to put his beach ball into his mouth but most of the time, I am the one who is desperately trying to keep everything out of his reach.

BabyD has learned to laugh out loud too and believe me it is by far the most beautiful sound I have ever heard. I can keep on tickling him or making faces all day just so that I can hear his laughter. More recently he has learned to be more social, he now knows when I am joking or trying to make him laugh and what's more is that he sometimes tries to make me laugh too. Especially during feeding times, he looks up at me with a grin and a naughty look in his eyes and when I smile back, he laughs and then quickly gets back to having his milk. After a few seconds he again looks up and laughs and when I laugh back... he resumes. This continues for as long as I have the time or he has the moods. He has learned to reach up and touch my face and when I am sitting with him in my lap talking to him or someone else, he reaches up to put his fingers on my mouth as if trying to see how I talk. If he is standing in my lap, he puts his fingers in my mouth and starts to laugh which in turn makes me laugh and we both keep giggling together.

But more recently, BabyD has learned to shout and scream and that is what alarms me. At first, we didn't mind him screaming because he had only just discovered that he could scream. In a way it was like he had discovered his voice. We kept him going and encouraged him to shout or call someone. BabyD would often scream and make noise while with his dad and I didn't mind it because I thought it to be 'father and son' time and well, I didn't think it right to tell Z how to play with his son. But now, we are both alarmed because we have found BabyD to be screaming when he is angry or irritated. D wants us to carry him around or hold him into a standing position all the time. Yesterday, I was busy in the kitchen and had to put him in his rocker or on his tummy. At first I thought he was playfully shouting but then after sometime I realised that he was angry and was actually screaming to ask me to pick him up. I picked him up and calmed him down. I had to carry him around the rest of the afternoon. He did the same thing again in the evening and even Z agrees now that BabyD is throwing a temper tantrum. I hope that it is just this once that he did that and that he doesn't do it often. How do you tell a baby to not scream? He is still too young to understand 'no' and there is no reasoning with him. I am just so scared that it may become a habit. Last night at dinner I put D in his seat and he started to scream. Z came in just then and told D in as stern a way as he could to stop that. D thought it funny and started laugh as though Z was playing with him! We both stared at him before bursting into laughter ourselves. Clearly, it is not going to be easy. There is no reasoning with a baby.

BabyD has learned to play on his own too. That is, when and if he is in the mood. He now looks at his toys more closely and turns them over and feels them and of course, puts them in his mouth to taste them too. He can now differentiate between colours and I have found him many a times putting his hands on colours that match. He looks at them to and fro patting on them. Last week, I found him putting his hand on the bed sheet. The bed sheet has alternating boxes of patterns of different colour and D would keep on putting his hand on one pattern and then looking for the match and then putting his hand on the exact same pattern. At first I thought it was a coincident but when he kept looking at both the patterns and putting his hands on them and continuing to search for others that looked like it, I was sure that he was matching them. I haven't read any where that babies at his age can do that and I have been too busy to ask Joey about it.

I sometimes think that BabyD is hyperactive. But then again, I am sure most mothers of toddlers think that way about their children. D cannot sit still at all. I wonder how it will be after he starts to actively crawl or when he starts walking... Uh OH!! I am disturbed by the thought already!

D loves to go out. He has learned to say Vroom Vroom and Zoom Zoom and it is just the mention of the word 'car' and he starts. He sits in his rocker ( which by the way doubles up as his car seat also) and goes Vroom Vroom for so long that he drools and spits all over his shirt. No matter how many times we tell him to stop it... his car just doesn't run out of gas!

While there are babies who bring their parents to tears over bath time, my son loves to take a bath. We have just to mention 'bath time' before he starts going boo boo. D bathes at night before going to bed. It is a part of his bedtime routine. Sometimes Z and I get so tired that we want to skip out the bathing but D remembers and as soon as we mention that it is 'sleepy time', he reminds us to boo boo him. He bounces and gets so excited that we forget how tired we are.

Z was asking me a few days ago as to what it is that I really taught BabyD so far that I can count as really teaching him something. I think, I taught my son to get up in the morning with a smile. :)