• Hair.  Enough to go curly when it gets long, and to look worryingly ‘Hawaiian Sunset’ in the right light.  Or should that be the wrong light?
• Teeth.  3 at the last count, with more coming.  He’s had 2 for what seems like an age, but the telltale signs of proper teething started about a week ago and he’s now sporting a nice big upper incisor to go with his 2 lowers.  The scarcity of teeth hasn’t really stood in his way though, as he half-munches & half-gums more or less anything we give him, including apple, raw carrot, chips, banana.
• Shoes.  He’s not walking yet, but he’s nearly there.  To help him on his way to full mobility, we’ve got him a pair of slipper-ish shoes to wear whilst he’s taking his tentative assisted footsteps.  With a steadying hand or two, he can walk, and there are moments when there’s no physical reason for the handholding.  Around and about the house, there are the odd moments, say when he’s standing, holding onto the sofa, when he forgets he can’t stand on his own, and lets go of the sofa; there follows a couple of seconds of standing before the brain kicks in saying “Oi, you can’t stand yet”, and down he goes.  It feels like one day he’s just going to ‘decide’ to walk, and he’ll be off.
• A temper.  He’s turned into a proper little person, with good moods and bad moods, and times when he’s happy to sit playing with a cardboard box, and other times when he needs constant interaction.  When he’s in a bad mood, and he doesn’t get his own way, we get the full on “laying on back kicking the floor” screaming ab-dabs.  Our usual reaction is to smirk a little, wait for him to ‘get over it’, and then carry on.  It rarely lasts for long.  We keep telling him he’s a little early for those terrible twos we keep hearing about.  He doesn’t seem to care.
• Words.  Just a few, but the available vocabulary seems to grow each week.  He has recognisable versions of ‘Hello’, ‘Bye bye’, ‘Mama’, ‘Dadda’, ‘Harry’ and ‘Brother’, as well as a  very expressive ‘Oooh’, which can mean a number of things, including “That’s new”, “I want that”, “I’m excited by that” and so on.  We also get nodding and shaking of the head, although not always in the right places.
• Waves.  This is a real charmer, and he knows it.  If he’s being cheeky and wandering off somewhere where he probably shouldn’t be, he’ll try to buy some time by giving a little regal wave on the way out.  Strangers in the street get the same treatment (sometimes accompanied by his ‘hello’).

In general, he is a happy, inquisitive little soul.  He’s growing in personality all the time, and acquiring new skills at a blistering rate.  I’m well aware that just about every parent in the land would say something similar of their own offspring, but I make no apologies for that.  Our boy is special, because he’s ours, and we love him to bits.

(‘Sweet Baby James’ set on Flickr)

Well, he’s almost seven months old now, and overall I think we’re really quite lucky. He is sleeping through the night (mostly), and gulps down pretty much whatever food we put in front of him. He is, however, showing his dad’s tendency for any cold or sniffle go straight to his chest, so he has his own Ventolin (complete with scary volumiser / gasmask attachment, which used to freak him out, but he’s used to it now). He started to crawl about a week ago and though he’s still pretty flat on his stomach, he can get some speed up when he wants to, which is usually when something potentially deadly is in view.

For the first 6 weeks or so he was quite difficult to settle, and would only sleep if Mary or I were there with him, even if we were just resting a hand on his chest. At about 6 weeks though, something changed and he decided that sleep was a good thing. We moved him into the cot in his own room, and ever since then we have been blessed with a relaxed, happy baby. We chill him out further with a bout of baby massage now and then (he loves his legs being done, not so sure about body and arms).

He melts my heart every time he smiles at me, and I do that new dad thing of gushing about his latest skill to every one who’ll listen (or at least pretend to…). Someone emailed me about being a new dad and ended a sentence with “…but you love him more than you thought possible, right?”. Right.

I’m going to stop now, as I hear murmurings from his room upstairs (that’ll be the ‘mostly’ sleeping through the night, then…). I suspect he just needs someone to find his dummy – he has a habit of launching it into the corner of the room a couple of times each night.

Here he is with my dad. I’ve converted the photo to black and white in an attempt to disguise which football team’s colours he’s in (ner ner )