Let's play ... A year ago today

A year ago, I was eating cottage cheese and cucumbers when I wasn't puking my guts out and wondering whether I'd have a five-month-old boy or girl in a year. On certain occasions, I'd turn to Jim and say, "Do you realize we'll have a [insert age here]-month-old in a year?" But it's not clear what I then imagined this would be like.

Now, five months into it, all of this was and is still beyond my wildest imagination - the pregnancy, labor and birth, the fog of the first few months, and those wonderful days when he picks up new skills, smiles a little wider, laughs a little louder, plays a little longer, talks a little more.

Eating the newspaper and other skills

I used to be able to read the paper while Danny rolled around on his bedroom floor. But these days, he is interested in whatever I'm doing. This week, it's the newspaper. Not to read, but to eat. Everything goes in his mouth and this morning it was the sports section. Jim is a little nervous about this new habit, afraid of all the germs, I guess. The best I can do is remove the choking hazards as I can't spend all day preventing him from doing what he and all babies his age do. Between the breast milk and all the stuff that goes in his mouth, I figure he'll be immune to just about everything.

We're also noticing that Danny is very, VERY strong. He's been able to bear weight on his legs since he was about two months old. If we prop him up at the coffee table, he'll balance there without assistance. Of course, our hands are always about an inch from his trunk. He can stand for a few seconds while holding just one finger. He can also take a few steps while he hangs onto my fingers.

Danny has also started scooting across the floor. When I returned from starting laundry Monday, he was three feet from where I left him on the floor of his room. He can push his bum and belly off the floor, but his arms aren't too strong. His legs do all the work.

And he loves to kick. This isn't really surprising since when I was pregnant, my stomach felt bruised. His latest favorite activity is kicking his feet against the side of his crib or the side of the bookshelf in his room. I'm afraid he's going to hurt his feet or break the crib, but it doesn't seem to bother him.

Foods he's tried lately: Carrots and butternut squash. He's had no adverse reactions yet to any of the food. So far, his favorites seem to be yogurt and applesauce. He really liked the sweet potatoes, but after the sweet poo-tato incident, I'm afraid, very afraid.

Scary moment of the day: My biggest fear these days is getting hurt when I'm alone with the baby. Well, today it finally happened. I got a steam burn on my fingers. And if you've ever had a steam burn, you know how much pain I was in. Luckily, he was in a good mood. If he was cranky or screaming, I would have panicked. I wound up in bed with my two burned fingers in a bowl of ice water and him sleeping (thankfully) next to me.