Monkey Toes: 4 months

A few days ago Keegan became 4 months old. Does it feel like it has flown by so far? Absolutely. I look at him and I can hardly remember the not-so-tiny baby boy he was upon being born. He has almost doubled in size to an official 17 pounds 3 ounces. I don’t remember exactly but I think that puts him in the 150^th percentile for four month olds. They didn’t measure his length, but that has increased dramatically as well. He is close to not fitting in his infant car seat which is alleged to hold infants up to 30 pounds. If we waited that long it would probably look like me trying to fit into a cozy coupe. So we will be getting a new car seat soon and hopefully it will fit in my car which is not a whole lot bigger than a cozy coupe. I imagine we can get a few more weeks out of our current setup and then we will have to get serious.

In addition to his body’s growth, his brain is growing as well. He is constantly looking around and figuring things out. He is still a talker and one of my favorite games to play is trying to get him to repeat sounds. I will give an “ooooooo” and he tries to mimic and has actually succeeded a few times. The amount of concentration he is giving in order to get his lips in the correct position is both amazing and insanely cute. He then proceeds to giggle which never fails to make me laugh. If I could carry his laugh around with me all day, I would always be in such a good mood. He is still very vocal and you can actually hear inflections in his voice. He might not be able to form any words yet, but you can tell if he is happy or upset. It is especially humorous when he talks to his toys. I think he is trying to tell them to do things that they are not doing. Speaking of toys, he also is putting everything in his mouth. He loves the hard plastic, purple antlers on his moose, Mortimer. You can just hand him the moose now and straight into the mouth it goes. It doesn’t even require any thought at this point, it is purely reactionary. The second his hand feels something it starts heading for his mouth. It goes for Mortimer, daddy’s hand and even the tray on his high chair. His little taste buds are working overtime, though, and I imagine his brain learning that the plastic ring is pretty benign, but that the cat does not go in the mouth.

Speaking of cats, the animals are getting along just fine with Keegan. He hasn’t really tried to put one in his mouth yet, but considering he now weighs as much as they do combined I imagine he is not far from trying to grab them. The cats do mind sharing our laps with Keegan and just make themselves comfortable. Aurora would also like to share the laps I think, but she is not allowed on the couch and is ok with just being petted. So really not much has changed for either the dog or the cats and they are just cruising along like nothing major happened. I think Suzanne and I are starting to feel this way as well as though Keegan has really been with us all along. Life without him is quite hard to imagine.