Getting to know you

Our house guest has now spent 4 months here and we're starting to understand him a little better.

His life is a simple cycle of eating or, more correctly, drinking, observing his world, crying as he finds another flaw in the way things are done sleeping and starting over. At intermittent intervals he will require a cleanup but don't we all. It's the moments he spends taking in his surroundings that are the most interesting and it's odd what catches the eye.

Much like cats deciding to play with the box their intended present came in NotHeidi will ignore the ever growing menagerie of stuffed animals and stare at the ceiling. Not in an idle head-in-the-air vacuous kind of way but a very intense stare at the item hanging from it.

He loves fans.

Whenever there's a fan in the vicinity and he sees it he will make an effort to continue seeing it. In an attempt to go with the flow I decided to humour him and tell him about how fans are quite useful in their own way, maybe not as much as ducted reverse cycle air conditioning but to illustrate the point of having them I switched one on. He became giddy with excitement, all his limbs twitching uncontrollably in utter delight that such a perfect thing could become more perfect still by moving in this way. It's then I became slightly envious of a man in a world so new that the sight of a ceiling fan could provide such an enthusiastic response.

His hands are enormous.

This is not to say I'm implying something that President Trump has previously been known to allude to, I'm not talking about that. When he was younger (not the incredibly ancient age he is now) his hands were semi permanently in a fist, with the thumb curled inside his other 4 fingers. As he slowly gains control of his muscles and learns to move them his hands have opened and now grasp things in ways that are encouraging. His hands are incredibly soft and his nails painfully sharp. It's an exercise in extreme patience and quite some concern to trim his nails. He will not hold still and the fear of trimming some finger along with the nail is frighteningly real. His hands can grasp his milk bottle and he will try to guide it to his mouth. Once in place it is possible to let go of the bottle for quite some time before his clutches fail him. I am thinking they might be goalkeepers hands.

Anything he does successfully grasp is usually guided to his mouth. Seeing him suck on fingers (both his own that those of others), books, toys, blankets and so on I am wondering if the term mouth is derived from the mouths of rivers. Bear with me. The mouth of a river is where water comes out into the ocean. So if you were going to name that geographic feature after a part of the body what would you choose? You'd go with penis, or vagina, or maybe bum if you're talking about the Ganges. No, it wasn't to protect the sensitivities of people who do not like to see those words that made them call it the mouth. It was the gushes of drool from a baby's mouth that did it. NotHeidi has an unending supply of saliva that falls out of his mouth at such a rate that we were left surprised at how many bibs we went through. Holding him on you for only a short amount of time will result in a wet patch where his mouth had been resting and any new bib is almost instantly soaked to the point where you start to wonder if maybe he is going to get dehydrated.

He has started to smile and giggle.

His mouth curls up at the edges to reveal a toothless smile that is so delightful and heartwarming that I am convinced, if he set his mind to it, he could melt steel just be smiling at it. It's an interesting transaction. His parents are genetically programed to want to see him smile. Things that please him make him smile. Therefore the parents expend a lot of effort into making him smile by pleasing him. So far tickling is completely passé. He finds getting undressed amusing, Daddy dancing makes him laugh (he's not alone) and looking in the mirror is also up there for him. It looks like the goalkeeping dream might make way for a career as a stripper.

The only thing standing against this is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to gas. Forget fracking, just hook this guy up to some generator and watch him go. Thankfully he's not yet on solid food but when he is I suspect that we might have to get him some charcoal filtered pants. Possibly as tear offs incase his dream of being a stripper is strong enough. It's not like he's eating Sauerkraut yet, heaven knows what gelatin will do to him.

As much fun as he has having his clothes taken off it's sometimes the case that they will not fit back on at the next cycle. His incessant eating has resulted in some serious growing and while it's a good thing that he does you can't help but feel bad for the clothes that barely got a look in. There's some seriously cute outfits that barely got a showing before they go into the pile of too small to fit anymore clothes. Looks like I might have to buy some more supporters gear before he turns 6 months after all. I'm not letting go of the goalkeeper option. He could combine the 2 careers... it would make for an amusing penalty shootout.