Saturday, November 28, 2009

Jobot


Jobot is a sweet little guy who is coming up on his first birthday. He is an incredibly smiley baby and is extremely attached to his Mommy. He is crawling and cruising right now, and every once and awhile tries to walk, but just ends up falling on his face. He can climb up the stairs, but not yet down.

He is clumsy and constantly banging himself up. He has multiple bruises on his head right now. There are several reasons for this. First of all, his height and weight are in the tenth percentile, while his head circumference is in the eightieth. As a result, he is rather top heavy. On top of that, he has torticollis, which means the muscles on one side of his neck are shortened and the muscles on the other side are elongated, causing him to hold his head to one side. Because it is hard for him to pull his head in the direction of the elongated muscles, he avoids leaning in the that direction and using the large muscle groups on that side of his body (which would require him to lean in that direction to maintain his balance). This has caused him to be stronger on one side of his body and weaker on the other. The final reason for the bumps and bruises is that Joe is very much a boy, and is physical, and rough, and adventurous. He wants to do and try everything, and it doesn't occur to him that he might not be able to or that he might hurt himself.

Joe's favorite things in the world, aside from Mommy, are balls, straps, his fingers, long sleeves, and the vacuum. He loves to chew and suck on straps, especially the ones hanging off the front of his car seat and the back of his high chair. He enjoys throwing things, especially balls, which he will then crawl after, pick up, and throw again. He adores the vacuum cleaner, and his eyes light up when we get it out of the closet. He wants desperately to chew on the cord and climb up the machine. He sucks his pointer and middle finger, and then will pull his sleeve on his opposite arm down over his hand, hold it in his little fist, and lay his arm across the top of his mouth. If he doesn't have long sleeves on, he will take a handful of his sleep sack, or the tags on his lovey and rub them back and forth under his nose.

His favorite activities are throwing things, banging things on tables or walls (or windows or doors), and playing with anything dangerous. If he doesn't have access to a dangerous object, he will try to stand in a precarious manner, or pull open a drawer or cabinet door and stick his little fingers in the opening and then fall against said drawer or door in what appears to be an attempt to break his fingers. Even the cabinet doors with baby locks can be opened enough to slide his little fingers in.

He is just starting to communicate. He doesn't have any official signs yet, but he has started waving in the past couple of days. On Wednesday night, he said "bow-wow-wow" and has been saying it ever since. Today, he started to say "bye bye" when he waves.

He is love, and we do love him.

1 comment:

Pier said...

A marvelous description of the Tiny Little Super Guy. He is a Wonder!