Teething for laughs

Life is marching on here. Shane popped up at 6:00 AM and now he's down for a quick nap behind me as I sip my morning tea.  His weight gain has slowed some recently, but he's still about 2.5x his birth body weight and he's not even 6 months old yet. That's not really what I wanted to talk about today, though.

Shane has been teething like there's no tomorrow.  He gnaws on his hands, anything he can put in his hands, and he air gnaws on anything he can see but can't reach. I wouldn't be surprised if his dreams were full of chewing. Every morning I check to see if a white monolith has erupted somewhere in my son's mouth. I feel like I'm playing the lottery: no winner has come forward! And yet, the boy has been teething for a couple of months. I'm half wondering if instead of one tooth popping in, Shane is going to wake up with a tiny white arsenal. It'll be nice to take my first picture of his first gap-toothed grin. In the meantime, I'll just keep providing new and exciting things for him to chew on!

Lately, the boy has become ticklish. Whether it's from my beard on his belly or cheek, or my wife tickling his toes, Shane will laugh and squeal. It's damned cute. I try not to tickle him more than for a split second, because he's not really old enough to say if he likes it or not. He is laughing and cackling more and more at ordinary things and when he gets excited! I can bounce around and make faces to get Shane laughing sometimes. Indy, my parent's dog, causes Shane to go straight into laughing hysterics. He loves watching Indy run around and chase a ball in his grandparents' backyard. Last week, I was helping him stand at the sliding glass door and he started cracking up when he saw Indy running around and jumping on the back porch. I fear he's going to be terrorizing that poor dog when he's old enough to run around, ha ha ha. Shane's also taken an interest in watching our cats. Right now, they mostly avoid the baby, but they're really lazy about it. They're going to learn the meaning of true terror once he discovers their tails! I predict trouble. It's going to be fun.

That wraps up the Shane update for today. Carrie is out of town this weekend speaking at some event for work.  Whoever was originally supposed to speak dropped out the week before last and Carrie got nominated to replace him/her. I'm going to be doing the single-parent thing until Sunday night. In the meantime, I'm going to catch up with my teacher friend, Many, for brunch, go to Bruce and Reina's baby shower in the afternoon, and visit my folks since my mom's birthday is tomorrow. For now: Waffles and tea.