His bag of tricks

Sportin' his Meredith College t-shirt

It's so hard to believe that Kemper is 4 months (almost 5) old!!! He's growing so fast and learning so many new things. He's begun sitting unassisted for 10-20 seconds but then he gets excited and topples over. He also LOVES to stand up and just the other day, I was holding his hands while he stood and he "walked" a little. Hard to explain, I know he's not REALLY walking yet (I mean, we know he's smart and advanced, but I dunno if he's THAT good) but he was definitely making an effort to pick his feet up and most of the time, they moved forward, occasionally, he stepped on his other foot. I'll try to get a video, but then I have to learn how to post it, so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting on that.

His sleep, while I have a LOT to be thankful for when it comes to him and sleep, isn't always the greatest. In fact, Monday morning he was so upset in his crib for naptime when he was obviously tired that I took him to the doctor to rule out an ear infection. No EI but the doctor said he has crummy sleep patterns and we're gonna start working on that. He usually goes to bed around 9:30 and gets up for the morning around 6 but wakes up 2-3 times during the night. Most of the time, the pacifier calms him immediately and he goes back to sleep, sometimes, seeing me walk into the room and not pick him up makes him MAD. He also hates to nap. James just said the other day that Kemper should take advantage of being able to nap now cause when he gets older, he'll wish he could nap. His morning nap is great, 1.5-2 hours, but after that, I'm lucky to get 2 30-minute naps during the day. By 8, he's obviously exhausted but is fighting sleep so bad and putting him to bed only makes him mad and gets him too worked up to sleep. It's a viscious cycle.



Anyhow, back to his bag of tricks. While at the doctor's office, Kemper proudly showed the doctor one of his newest "things" - fake coughing. Yup, he sounds so pitiful. It's a cough, as my dad dubbed it, that you use when you just don't want to go to school that morning. The doctor got a great laugh out of it that morning. At first, he knew it would solicit a response from us but now, he will cough and cough and cough if we're not paying attention to him. Once you turn and look at him, he just grins at you. He's also learning that when you go to pick him up, if you hold your hands out, he'll flap his arms up and down at you as if to say "pick me up please!" (well, I like to think that the please is in that precious little head of his).

Excuse me, I'm kinda busy here....

At the doctor on Monday, she gave us the go ahead to start him on real food in 2 weeks. She wants him to have 2 more weeks on rice cereal and then we can introduce veggies and fruits slowly. He is more than ready for food...he watches us like a hawk while we eat. He grabs for the fork and our glass and we've been giving him tiny (fingertip with a little tiny bit) tastes of food off our plates (i.e. gravy, mashed potatoes, pizza sauce) and I will pull my straw out of water or tea and let him taste the little bit left on the end. He laps it all up. I'm thinking that we aren't gonna have a problem with him trying out different foods - hopefully he won't be quite as picky as his daddy!!

Weight training with Pops