Baby Babbles and Belly Laughs

Noah is now almost 6 months old and he's reached that age where everything starts happening at once. Suddenly he's much more active and seems to be reaching those milestones left and right....

For one thing he's started teething. He doesn't have anything to show for it yet but judging by his newfound crankiness, his urge to gum everything within reach to death, and the excessive drooling, I would guess he'll have a few by the end of the month.

He's also started rolling over, both front to back and vice versa. Which, even though he's not crawling, makes him mobile enough that we have to watch out what Bree leaves on the floor. If Noah sees something he wants enough he can make his way over there, rolling over and over until he gets it. He's kind of sneaky about it though, we haven't actually SEEN him rolling over many times, he seems to wait to do this thing until your back is turned or you walk out of the room for a minute, and then when you turn back around...surprise! He's 3 feet from where you left him and now on his stomach, stuffing the corner of a blanket in his mouth!

Of course, aside from the physical changes he's also becoming more fun and interactive as his personality is starting to come out. He's started "talking" to us quite a bit, babbling syllables, his favorite being a tie between going dadadadadada (much to Trav's complete smug satisfaction, why is it they always seem to say that first?) and making a raspberrry "bbbpbpp" noise with his lips. It's kind of amusing as well since he's experimenting with his volume control. You never know if he'll be whispering "dadada" or screeching it at the very high range of his vocal ability, sounding a lot like those whistling fireworks.

I think the most charming part for me though is watching the relationship develop between Noah and Bree. So far they seem to like each other pretty well. (Bree even said the other day, "Mom, I'm so glad we have a brother!") Brianna finds his little noises and movements funny, she's always busting up laughing over him. (I'm pretty sure she thinks he's doing stuff just to amuse her.) She particularly thinks it's funny when he makes his raspberry noises and also when he splashes around in the tub. I've had the two in the tub together a number of times and it's always the same. Noah gets all excited in the warm water and flaps his arms like he's trying to take off in flight and then kicks his legs like a bronco, making lots of splashes in Bree's direction. Then she starts laughing and splashes him back, which makes him get excited and kick some more and so on until Brianna is practically hysterical she's laughing so much. So she likes him but it goes both ways too, Noah always has smiles for her and she was the source of his first big belly laugh the other day.

Noah's always smiled easily and has been laughing for awhile now, little giggles and such. But the other day he had an out and out big old guffaw at his sister. I think it may have had something to do with the fact that it was evening and both of them were getting into that zone where they're tired enough they get silly, and everything seems funny. And Bree was doing her usual...interesting little pretend play things. For some reason she was being a chicken at that moment, jumping up and down and clucking and such and being really loud about it too. Loud enough that little Noah started paying attention to her, watching her very closely. The next time she started in on her jumping up and down, flapping her arms and making loud chicken noises he just busted out laughing, a big old laugh. (She did look fairly ridiculous so...) Of course, seeing him laugh at her made her laugh and only act more outrageous which made him laugh again, which made Trav and I laugh at both of them laughing. And that went on for a few minutes, you know how it is. I'm sure you've been in that sort of situation before, a sort of a group laugh hysteria where you can't seem to stop for a few minutes. Of course, somehow, as it seems to cross the line so easily with her age group, it ended in tears a few minutes later for Bree when she was just so amped up and hyper over the whole incident that her antics got out of control. Poor kid. Oh well...

But there you have it, Noah's first big laugh, attributed to Bree.