I Write. You Read.

Oh, I know what you’re going to think. Of course he says his child is a genius. It’s his kid! What parent wouldn’t evangelize the accomplishments of his offspring, especially when they include the discovery of a cure for cancer, the eradication of world hunger and the Elfstrom Plan for World Peace (That Actually Works)™? Really, who wouldn’t be proud?

Here in the real world, though, Simon has made quite a few milestones recently. In a time span of just over two weeks he has:

• Begun growing teeth
• Learned to roll over from his back to his stomach (this is reproducible and I have seen it happen)
• Discovered the wonders of solid foods (in three distinct flavors: rice cereal, carrots and squash)
• Slept through the night on a consistent (yet still somehow irregular) basis

I’m sure that I’ve left something out… Like cold fusion or a pill to stop aging. I’ll have to check my logs.

But speaking of teeth, Simon bit me yesterday. It hurt. It started out innocently enough, with an attempt at finger-sucking. This was kinda of an adorable development over the past few weeks, as my index finger or thumb became a target for slobbery gumming, but that was before the Tooth. The Tooth has now broken the gum surface, and it is very sharp. I thought he had broken the skin at first, but it turns out the Tooth merely left a dent. It’s a good thing; I’ve heard that once they have the taste for blood, the Teeth have to be put down.

Simon’s mother has had to deal with the Tooth more than I, of course, but I can’t speak for her. Let’s just say that an increasing number of feeding sessions have ended with an abrupt yelp of painful surprise.

The Tooth seems quite pleased with the solid food, however. Simon slurps it down like a champ, and already he seems eager to take the next step ��chewing. He watches us eat with an expression that may not be hunger but is certainly related to desire, or at the least curiosity. It’s hard to resist the temptation to feed him new and exciting things, just to see what might happen, how he would react. We’ve been advised, however, to introduce new foods slowly, so as to reduce the impact lest some insidious allergic reaction make itself known.

Along with the change of input has come a significant alteration of the output. You call it poop. There’s been less of it, and it’s of a very different nature than the breast-milk poop. More of a big-boy poop sized for a little boy. And that’s all of the poop talk for today.

The sleeping is not going as well as it began two weeks ago, but it’s pretty good. I’d estimate that three or four nights out of the week Simon sleeps solidly from about ten o’clock at night until five-thirty or six o’clock in the morning. I have to estimate because I don’t get up in the middle of the night when he doesn’t make it; I have to infer the night’s sleeping pattern from the mood of his mother. She’s especially chipper when Simon doesn’t wake her up at one-thirty, especially not chipper if he does.

And then there is the Rolling. I haven’t seen him roll front-to-back just yet, but Angie assures me that it happens. Watching him roll back-to-front, though, is fantastic. For the first week or so he had a hard time getting the roll-side arm out from underneath his chubby belly, but these days it pops right out more often than not, helping to prop up his little turtle-like head. He’s a lot more steady now, more able to hold up his melon without so much of the bobbing. But when he gets tired, that thing drops like a brick.

As you can see from the evidence presented so far, our little Super Genius is making quite a lot of progress. I’ll be printing up his business cars any day now, and hope that he’s better at catching his quarry than that self-immolating coyote.