Linus update

It’s not that I’ve forgotten to blog, I’ve just been very busy elsewhere. Gitta has joined me at Citizen Media Watch, and over the past month we’ve been giving the site new life. SIME was the starting point for us, but we’ve also got further plans for interviews and other posts. It’s good to “work” for yourself for once, though of course taking care of a four month old baby puts limits to how much work you can actually put into it, and when.

Linus is doing well, though he’s had a couple of months of stomach problems/cramps that has been a bit tough for him, and for us as well. Now they seem to be less frequent.
He is growing so fast, already he’s about 70 cm tall and weighs well over 8 kilos. I’ve got a big pile of baby clothes that I need to give away or sell on Tradera.

For a couple of weeks now, he’s been practicing to stand up. He’s getting better and better, pushing himself up while I’m holding him, then goes back down again after a while. It’s very frustrating for him. Sometimes he cries a lot and gets upset because there’s so much he wants to do and explore, but he’s not quite able to do it yet. I try to help him as much as possible, but it’s not always easy to know what he wants and needs. I’m reading a quite interesting book right now by two Dutch scientists, The Wonder Weeks: How to Turn Your Baby’s 8 Great Fussy Phases into Magical Leaps Forward by Hetty van de Rijt and Frans Plooij (Växa och upptäcka världen in Swedish). It explains how there are a number of leaps in a child’s development during the first year, and how the baby gets extra cranky just before each such leap. Afterwards he’s learnt new abilities and looks at the world in a new way. It’s no rocket science, but still I thought it interesting.

I think he’s just entered one of these leaps, because he’s been very needy/clingy/upset for a few weeks, and now he’s developing new skills, like practicing to talk. A lot of cute sounds come from his mouth. Some of the first things he said early on was “lä”, “lil” and various nasal sounds, and now he’s broadening his repertoir to encompass sounds like “ning”, “u”-sounds, “ajajaj” and “hej” (well, that’s what it sounds like).

We’re also wondering if he’s teething already, since he’s been drooling a lot for the past few weeks.