Two days ago, Joe was drooling even more than usual and chewing on his fingers a lot. I offered him one of my knuckles, and as soon as he got it in there, I felt something sharp scraping my skin. I pried his mouth open and got just the slightest glimpse of a tooth coming through.
Today it’s finally grown enough to photograph:
Click here for a closer inspection.
Our boy is growing up!
Joe has a new toy — one of those Johnny Jump-Up things that hangs in the doorway on a spring so he can jump and bounce.
He wasn’t sure what to make of it at first:
But now look at him go!
(OK, Patrick helped a bit.)
I predicted that I’d be asleep by 10 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, but I bought some champagne to toast with before bed. I didn’t remember I had it until about 9:45, so we sat down to have a glass and talk about our resolutions for the year.
One glass led to a second, and before we knew it, the clock said 11:45!
Right about that time, Joe woke up crying with some teething pain. So we all ended up in the living room, watching Dick Clark as the ball dropped.
Here are some of the resolutions we came up with:
We also spent some time talking about how different Joe will be this time next year. On the one hand, I’m eager to see the little boy he will become. On the other hand, I want him to stay as little and sweet as he is now!
This is a few weeks old, but it’s still lots of fun!
Joe went through a phase where animal noises cracked him up. Especially barking and oinking.
I’ll do anything for a laugh!
Joe enjoyed his first Christmas at my parents’ house in North Carolina. He tried some new foods (bananas rule!), heard some new stories, played with some new toys and got loved on a lot.
Here he is enjoying a laugh with his Dad:
You can’t tell from the video, but he really has been wearing his glasses every day and doesn’t seem to mind them too much. What a good boy!
Joe’s ophthalmologist says that he has astigmatism and slight nearsightedness. That’s not enough to explain why he doesn’t “track” objects very well, or see more than a few feet away, but he’s supposed to try glasses to correct them anyway.
The doctor thinks that making a less blurry view for the brain to interpret might stop the wiggling and crossing of his eyes, the two things that are probably making it hard for him to see.
How cute is this!
Halfway to birthday cake!
We hadn’t planned to start giving Joe solids until he was 6 months old, but this morning I had him weighed with me at Weight Watchers (I’m down 0.8 pounds, the week after Thanksgiving, thankyouverymuch) and he was just 14.8 pounds. According to this calculator, that’s between the 5th and 10th percentiles.
It’s not an alarming number (he doesn’t look like this kid!) but at his last checkup he was in the 25th percentile — so he might need to fatten up a bit for winter.
And anyway, he turns 6 months old next week!
So tonight Patrick and I gave him his very first taste of solid food. I use the term “solid” loosely here — the rice cereal (which looks like fish food, or instant mashed potatoes) is mixed in a 1 to 4 ratio with milk, so it’s more like egg nog than food.
He seemed a little perplexed by the whole thing, but he got most of it down before completely losing interest.
Tomorrow, he gets pizza!
Joe Tremblay 
