Morning all. It's been a bit, as we've once again spent our weekends with friends and family, and the weeks in between too exhausted to do much besides laundry and work. I've also got a new job, and spent a week between old and new hanging with Reid and trying to relax, but ending up doing a lot of other stuff instead.

Reid's development is amusing and stop-starty. He has a fifth tooth, and confounding the experts who claimed that any additional teeth would be on top, he brought it in on the bottom, right next to the first two down there, which are now quite long and sharp.

He has tons of favorite activities, and just when we settle into enjoying one, another pops up on the horizon. While bathtime is still fun, it has been slightly overtaken by Reid's frightening urge to lean forward and walk his hands up the opposite side of the tub into a horrifying, naked-baby standing up position. You're sitting there, playing with frogs or ducks or what-have-you, when suddenly your flashing to an image of little heads banging onto tub-edges, all while staring into this little grin because Reid doesn't care at all that he's endangering his life. He loves standing up! Standing up is tremendous fun! Stand up!

The fifth tooth was spotted last night at dinner. We have begun experimenting with non-mushy foods, such as rice cakes, bananas and the like (still no Cheerios or raisins, because K and I have a pathological fear of baby-choking). Rice cakes dissolve almost immediately upon impact with a drooly little mouth, plus Reid likes eating something we may eat. It's a win-win.

But I looked down at Reid while eating a grownup dinner and was certain that he had a little bit of rice cake left in there. He has been known to store a bit of banana from supper at 6:30 until bedtime at 8, when he miraculously produces it while you're putting him into his crib. It's as if he is willing to try anything once to get out of going to bed.

So I assumed that the white thing next to his two front bottom teeth was another food surprise. Imagine, then, my shock when I found that it wasn't going anywhere, that it was actually a little tooth, which had broken through the gumline and was marching forward to join its partners in crime.

Reid uses his teeth in three major ways right now. Despite our introduction of semi-solid foods, eating is none of them. I honestly question the evolutionary value of having baby's teeth come in from the front first, because no baby is tearing flesh with his new incisors. No, babies in ancient times were breastfeeding and not much else. Today, babies are still breastfeeding (though Reid is drinking formula) and eating soft, mushy foodstuffs. In neither case are the incisors really coming in that handy. How are they coming in handy? Like I said, three ways:

1. Biting his parents.

2. Biting himself.

3. Inexplicably clamping down on toys and then thrusting his chin outward, doing a baby version of a proud strut (in his exersaucer) with his quarry firmly locked in his five, tiny teeth. (Photo to come.)

So that's the newest hobby, really. The clamping. He seems happy enough with it, though we all know it will be gone and replaced by something more amusing and beguiling shortly. Each week, and sometimes each day, he takes on a new behavior. In other ways, it feels like nothing is changing. He loves to stand, in the tub or out, but he hasn't made much progress toward walking. He still hates to be on his stomach, and instead of making babysteps toward crawling he prefers to arch his back and shout angrily about being on his belly. This behavior hasn't changed for weeks either.

And really, I think that a baby's life is like that. Little shifts, like a glacier's slow march south, happen before your eyes, and you barely notice. Yet it's always just a great big mountain of ice, so how much could it change?