7 Months

1)  As predicted, this month was indeed all about movement.  Once Sprout learned to lift his body up, he spent a little while using a unique and painful method to get around:  he would get up on all fours, and then fall forward onto his face.  Then he would get up on all fours again, and fall forward a few more inches...and so on.  After a few days of this, he started Army crawling a little bit - sort of slithering around on the floor without lifting himself much.  Then a few days later, he began combining the two movements:  he started getting a few forward movements on all fours, and then would plop back down and Army crawl.

This opened up all sorts of new vistas for him, and whenever he spotted a previously un-tasted object, he would get a gleam in his eye and scuttle to it as fast as possible.  In this manner he tasted a plastic bag, a wide variety of discarded tissues, and multiple pairs of shoes before we wised up.  Somewhere in all this motor movement, he also figured out how to get to a sitting position by himself.

2)  By the beginning of November, about two weeks after his first attempts, the baby was legit crawling.  Apparently he's an overachiever though, because as soon as he got crawling mostly down, he started trying to stand by pushing his arms against the floor and doing a sort of downward-facing dog yoga pose.  Within a week, he managed to pull himself up to a standing position in the crib, and is now working on other, more slippery surfaces.  It should be noted that even at this stage, he still hasn't fully mastered sitting - he periodically just tips over and bumps his head for no apparent reason.

3)  In other developments, Sprout also enjoys kissing his Mama.  Unfortunately, this is a rather rough form of affection - he grabs at the hair on either side of my face, and jerks my head forward until he can slobber on my cheek.  His excited, huge grin makes this experience worth the lost hair I then have to pick out of his chubby clenched fists.

4)  Sprout was never particularly cooperative with diaper changes, but this month he's taken the wiggling to a new level.  It now requires either two people to hold him still, or one person with a dazzling new toy or inventive noise.  Otherwise, forget it, the kid twists and turns and twists and turns, making a five minute diaper change last about six times longer than necessary.

5)  Fuzzy has been bringing home cold after cold from preschool, and then giving said cold to Sprout.  This is bad on a lot of levels, not the least of which is that the child struggles like a feral animal whenever a tissue comes near his nose.  Paradoxically, tissues also happen to be his favorite snack - if a box is left unattended somewhere in Sprout's reach, he will lunge toward it, grab a tissue, and quickly stuff it in his mouth while chewing energetically.

6)  We've been slowly introducing Sprout to solid foods, prompted by an interest on his part: when he sees us eating now, he will smack his lips like an old man missing his dentures, while pointedly staring at whatever delectable object we are putting in our mouths.  So far, he's liked almost every baby food we tried, although, par for the course, he quickly grows bored and refuses to eat more than an ounce or so.