Baby Bear in the Forest

Baby Man is turning 5 months old in a week. This is craziness. Pretty soon he'll be off to college. He's already been sleeping in his own room for a couple weeks now. I think he's teething because he's become a big time drooler and is always stuffing things into his mouth, as you can see here:
He's also starting to roll around like a champ. Well...rolling from tummy to back anyways. He got a bit behind with his baby milestones because he couldn't tolerate tummy time and would crumple into baby bear tantrums within seconds of being put on his tummy and would then just kinda thrash around, which is great exercise but not so great for learning. We persevered, though, and got him to start actually liking tummy time for a few minutes at least by the time he was 4 months old and he got caught up right away. He hasn't quite figured out how to roll onto his belly yet but he'll roll onto his side fairly often from his back so it should be right around the corner. Although I'm not sure how much motivation he has since even with all his improvement, he still really dislikes being on his tummy.

But enough about that. He's also started making these really loud chirping sounds, usually when he appears to be conversing with light fixtures. He especially loves this nighttime lamp we got for him. He'll sit there talking to that guy for like 10+ minutes. About what, I've got no idea. Sometimes he'll get so into it that I'll catch myself glancing over at the light myself to see what all the fuss is about. But, surprisingly, whenever I look there's just some lame lamp sitting there doing nothing. He's gradually becoming more independent. He goes to sleep in his crib now all by himself and can usually get himself back to sleep if I wakes up, unless he's hungry. Which happens a lot because he's a hungry little baby bear. He insists on helping me with all the chores and gets very upset if I'm not holding him while vacuuming, dusting (lol, like I ever dust. but if I DID, you can bet he'd wanna help), cooking, doing the dishes, etc. You can imagine that it isn't always feasible to be holding him so he gets upset fairly frequently. Occasionally lately he'll be content to hang out in his baby chair and watch me work while playing with some toys. Usually when that happens I'll just stare at him wondering if someone switched out my baby and forget all about the stuff I've gotta get done . I think those rare times are becomming more frequent though. Very exciting.

He gets scared by new things sometimes...


...but he's learned to retaliate with some sweet action ninja moves that his friend Ryker (aka mr Bugglesworth) has been teaching him:


And he's got some pretty amazing plotting skills...where he learned those I've got no idea.