I'm a terrible blogger. I've moved into a newly blasé phase as far as my blogging is concerned, and I'm wondering if it's going to stick, or if I'm going to be able to snap back into the swing of things. We'll have to see.

My time at home with Reid was incredible. I think there is a conception that a mother is somehow closer to her baby than a father is, and since a mother always takes some sort of leave at the beginning of the child's life, I can understand how this takes hold. I encourage any new father to do what I did and proactively seek out a period of time to spend with your new child, learning is rhythms, understanding his needs and moods, and providing everything you can for him. I think it was through this experience that strongest bonds occur, and that is definitely what happened to me.

When Reid was born he was quite jaundiced, which is apparently fairly common in newborns. The treatment is to make sure he eats on schedule and often, and processes bilirubin out of his system. A side effect of the jaundice is lethargy, and that lethargy was the greatest enemy of Reid's recovery, because he just wanted to sleep.

As a result, we supplemented K's breastfeeding with bottlefed breastmilk, because we were concerned that some of the normal early-feeding jitters would interfere with him actually getting food in his stomach and clearing up his jaundice.

All of this is a means of explaining that during my time with Reid we went entirely onto bottlefeeding breastmilk, without any the drama of weaning that we've read about.

K was jealous that I would be home for this month because quite a few developmental landmarks were on the schedule. Reid finally laughed the other day, adding the chuckle to his admirable repetoire of squeals of delight and various other chatty noises. He has rolled halfway round, from his back to his side, and recognizes K and I as important figures in his life, who receive his best smiles and also best shouting.

Reid's trajectory is amazing. Supporting his head fully now, we go out walking in the Baby Bjorn, and Reid has switched to the front-facing setup, allowing him to wander through the Target like a true future consumer, ogling products and admiring advertising. He responds to speech, so if Reid decides he's chatting (his normal so-called speech is a series of long, simple syllables, like a person trying to give directions while undergoing dental surgery), we can extend his little conversations by talking back to him. Tone is all that matters.

He plays, alone or with us, finally reaching out and successfully grabbing onto things. For a while there, Reid kept his hands in tight little fists. He seemed to be constantly threatening people, waving his fists like a frustrated driver in dense traffic. Now he has opened his hands (the better to jam them into his mouth), and he reaches out for toys and noisemakers and carefully examines them, usually including his super-sensitive tongue in the research.

He has also begun teething, which seemed alarming at first because he was hustling right through his early months and moving onto major breakthroughs. The tooth is appearing right in front, and is the catalyst behind an inordinate amount of drool where once there was none. While the tooth has caused some pain, Reid appears to take it in stride, and he has not allowed it to interfere with his prodigious intake of food.

At about four months old, Reid weighs somewhere between 15˝ and 16 pounds, though our accuracy is limited by the fact that the one baby-related gewgaw we didn't buy was a baby scale. He has a four-month visit to the doctor scheduled next week, and all new dimensional data will be revealed then.

As you can see from the photo above, for Halloween, Reid was a pumpkin, and just about the cutest damn squash you've ever seen. I've been a bad blogger, but I'll try to be better in the weeks ahead as I report on the next phase in Reid's life, daycare.