It was a big weekend here in the Kenyon household because Edward discovered his feet. He's always had them, of course, but they didn't do him much good. This weekend, however, he started playing with them, raising his legs into the air while on his back to get better access to them, and using the positions afforded by his new high chair to get at them.

As you can see from the photo, he's also quite happy about this development. He's been very smiley for quite a while, but it has been hard to catch the moment with our digital camera. I read a story in the Wall Street Journal on Friday about this, and we're not alone. To keep camera prices low, they sacrifice processing speed, which means a lag of as much as 2 seconds between the time you press the shutter and the time the photo is taken. So, We've missed quite a few of Ed's smiles because he notices the camera and replaces his smile with a stoic stare by the time the picture takes.

Today, however, was so smiley that it didn't matter. I was so excited to capture this one that I cheered loud enough to startle him; a moment later, the smiles started again. I was so eager to catch more of this, that I rattled off several shots (after the built-in time lag, of course). I then switched to video mode to catch some of his foot-playing. Enjoy.

Every baby's birth is a miracle as we all know. Apparently though, something about the Geraghty family brings out more than just your average garden-variety miracles.

Edward's cousin Katherine Claire was born at a healthy 7 lbs. in Milwaukee last night by emergency C-section. My sister, in her 39th week of a healthy pregnancy, had extremely high blood pressure at her check-up yesterday afternoon and so was admitted to be evaluated to determine whether they would induce labor or do a C-section. Without making public too much of Ann's personal information, suffice it to say that after several hours of monitoring her doctors decided a C-section was urgently needed so she was rushed to surgery under general anesthetic. Both Ann and Katherine came through like champions, and the doctors' urgency turned out to be justified. Katherine had a knot in her umbilical cord and was laying in such a way that contractions were causing her head to press on the cord.

We count our blessings every day, and today Katherine is at the top of the list! In fact, she might take up the first five spots or so.

Today Edward is five months old. He has lots of new tricks, but his favorite is jamming his hands in his mouth as far as they can go, sometimes to the point of gagging himself. He loves the taste/texture of his own hands and will happily suck and slurp away for, well, not hours given his attention span, but many minutes. He also is grabbing things like toys and parental hands/fingers or whatever happens to come within arm's reach. If he can manage, he will work to get these things in his mouth as well. A couple of times he's gotten so slobbery that I've actually checked for teeth, but nothing yet.

He still stops smiling the second he sees the camera so those who want to witness this heart-melting phenomenon will have to visit in person. He also giggles sometimes.

Now he's eating one new food each week by spoon. This week was green beans. Who knows what culinary treat awaits next week. We've gotten into a pretty good pattern where he'll eat either right before or right after John and I have dinner. He stays in his high chair while we eat so he can see what we're doing and join in the conversation. He doesn't really know about waiting for his turn to speak though. He just has so much to say and it's all so exciting he just can't wait. It's fun to think up responses that make it seem like he actually said something we understood.

He sleeps well--usually making it from about 8 p.m. to about 6 a.m. These are not iron-clad though, as he sometimes decides around 2 a.m. that a little snack will be just the thing to get him through the rest of the night. It doesn't take long and then we're both back to bed within 20-30 minutes. He also has a tendency to fall asleep in the car, no matter how short the trip--even just the 10 minutes it takes to get home from daycare. When this happens I usually just leave him in his seat to sleep, rather than waking him up to transfer to the crib.

These OshKosh overalls got rave reviews at school today. Yesterday's shorts romper was also a hit until it did not provide enough of a barrier when he decided to poop for the first time since Sunday. His poor teacher picked him up to snuggle without realizing what he'd been up to. Luckily she had a spare pair of jeans in her car. Ed, of course, always has spare clothes there for just such an event as this one.

Poop and all, it's been a great five months, and we can't wait for what lies ahead.

I've been wanting a picture of Edward in this purple chair at daycare for a couple of weeks now. Not wanting to be too disruptive to the classroom, I've refrained from hosting my own personal photo session, but I've had the camera in my bag just in case the right opportunity arose. This morning, there it was. There was an extra teacher in the room and all the babies were calm. So when I took him out of his carseat I grabbed the chair and my camera and took a few quick shots before I left for work. The teachers agreed that this image is definitely a keeper. They love him in the chair as much as I do. I don't know why I find it so hilarious, but it just cracks me up whenever I come in to pick him up and he's just sitting there observing the world. We often say Edward looks like an old man with his serious expression and his pants hiked up to his chest, so maybe this is the "old man baby version" of the La-Z-Boy.

Over the weekend we had Edward out at a street festival. We brought along the all-important sun hat in case he decided he wanted out of the stroller with its protective canopy. He stayed put so he didn't need it, but we tried it on at home anyway to see how he'd react. Definitely something we need to know since he will basically need to wear a hat from now until October. Poor little bald head! He seemed to like it--or at least he didn't thrash about trying to get it off his head. Perhaps the early training with his ever-present penguin hat and the "parade of hats" that kept him warm is paying dividends.

We tried spoon feeding with Edward for the first time last night, and the results were surprisingly good. While he surely ended with more on his face and bib than in his mouth, it wasn't nearly as messy as I had feared. We started with a mix of rice cereal and breast milk (much more of the latter than the former). At first, he wasn't overjoyed with the whole thing, refusing to swallow much of what we gave him.


As it went on, and we all started to get the hang of things, he began reaching his hand out as if to help guide the spoon, and actually opened his mouth to eagerly welcome this new food source. Given Edward's track record with eating (in short, he likes it quite a bit), we knew he would be willing to work at it. He actually took to it more readily than he did the bottle.


These days, the bottle is no trouble for him. As you can see here, he's confident (perhaps overly so) in his abilities to take things into his own hands. We're not quite there yet, but compared to the screaming fits that accompanied our first attempts with the bottle, this is significant progress.


For those wanting to see more of the action, here is some video of this momentous occasion.

Edward weighed in at 14 lbs. 12 oz. at his four-month check-up yesterday. That's the 50th percentile for weight. Pretty good for a little guy who started out in about the 3rd percentile because of being born early. His length is up to 24 1/4 inches, which is the 25th percentile. All in all an excellent report. The doctor said she had "nothing but compliments" for John and me, that we're doing well and helping Edward to thrive.

The next big step will be introducing some rice cereal. We haven't been to the store yet to buy any, but will give it a try sometime soon. The instructions are to try it when he's hungry and when we have plenty of time. I think we also will need to plan a post-meal bath! Edward is already a messy eater, slurping and drooling his milk. Cereal will be a new horizon--possibly video-worthy, though I'm not sure we'll have enough hands for the feeding and the camera work. We'll see.

We asked about sunscreen, now that it's staying warm and we expect to spend more time outside. Usually they don't recommend sunscreen for babies under six months old, but she looked at John and me, looked back at Edward and said, "Oh yeah, he'll need protection so go ahead and use sunscreen." Also hats and light cotton layers. Unfortunately for Edward, pigment is not among our genetic gifts to him.

He screamed through his shots again but this time I was better prepared. I had him wearing a little shorts romper so I didn't have to get him dressed after the shots and I had asked if I could stay in the examining room long enough to feed him afterward. Nursing calmed him down and he ended up sleeping most of the rest of the afternoon. He slept a lot at daycare today and this afternoon at home. This was good for me because I've picked up a cold and wasn't feeling terribly energetic today. We both had good naps this afternoon.

He was very alert when John got home from work and they had a nice "chat" with Edward making lots of babbling sounds and John answering back with what he guessed were the appropriate responses to what Edward might be saying.

Not much time or energy for photo sessions lately, but we'll try to get some new ones posted by this weekend.