Felix expands his repertoire

July 2000

Other Felix pages include
Felix March 2000	Travels June 2000	Snakes and frogs April 2000	A poem March 2000
	Habits and habits April 2000	Grandmother visits March 2000	In utero October 1999

Figure 1

Felix has established that while it is good to have one toy in his mouth, it is better to have two toys, a burp cloth, and a fist. To this end, he learned to grasp items and bring them directly to his mouth.

This skill is especially appreciated, if not especially expert, when he eats from a bottle. He makes a grand effort to get the bottle properly positioned and placed, guiding it carefully from a long distance away toward his gaping maw. Then, at the critical moment, zeal takes over and he rapidly jams the front end of the nipple into his cheek or nose, depositing a smear of milk.

Felix has also been making special efforts in verbal communication. In particular, he has moved through certain kinds of noises to more sophisticated other, similarly non-English kinds of noises. Table 1 provides some information on these pre-speech sounds and also includes some non-speech-related noises for general perspective and comparison.

Felix has demonstrated that improved motor control makes life more interesting. He finds several ways each week, in fact, to increase the interest quotient. The instruction manuals describe the various things that your baby will learn to do while growing older. The central thing for Felix seems to be eating, which leads to growing. But he is not a mere engine to convert ounces of milk into more pounds of baby belly. In fact, he's learning to swing his weight around.

Adventures at home

In June, Felix spent his first nights with just one parent. After their Texas junket, his dad stayed for two extra nights in the state of Texas to look at the airport and to visit the chachalacas. That meant that Felix got to ride home on the airplane with just his mama. They took along the flight crew plus all the other passengers, including the woman next to the Sloos in 15D. Felix turned on the charm, or rather failed to turn it off, and the flight went smoothly.

The following week, Alaina went off for a couple days' respite from Silicon Valley at central Arizona's lovely Miraval spa. She left Felix back at home, along with a freezer full of milk, so that David wouldn't be too lonely and so that Felix wouldn't be too hungry.

The general verdict is that, although there is more room in the bed when one parent is away, there are also fewer people to take care of the bleary-eyed feeding, sleepy changes, and frequent cuddling.

Table 1: A timeline of sounds made by Felix Sloo click on any sound to hear it
March 7	March 25	April 11	June 15	June 28	June 29
comments			comments	explanation
	squeak		squeal
	hiccup				hiccups
	cry
		sneeze	sneeze
			laugh		laugh
				croak

Further developments in the battle against gravity

Figure 2

Felix has discovered that he can defy gravity to a large extent by using several different muscles in balanced opposition. In this particular exercise, Felix's lower back muscles keep his nose off the carpet. Working in opposition, his abdominals are keeping his noggin off the floor.

Note how the legs are splayed wide for stability. However, Felix has made the error of lifting his right hand from the carpet, where it was providing critical lateral support. This support removed, Felix soon rolled onto his right temple.

Sitting provides multiple advantages. Best among them: it's easy to look at things other than the skylight or the daddy-longlegs on the ceiling.

Needless to say, what you get to see when you are sitting is not always interesting.

Figure 3: Sitting offers perspective

Figure 5

Balance notwithstanding, standing up is great. Felix spends as much time as he can daily in this position. It's like sitting only much harder and considerably taller. Note how Felix's eye level reaches close to his mama's eye level when he is in the standing position. Note also that the overall straps lie gently against his body, rather than sticking up somewhere around his ears.

Felix's overalls have a hammer loop, here in use for a hammer. It turns out that this loop is eminently practical for attaching the chicken and the pentapus as well. Once attached, a toy remains conveniently within reach.

Clothing

Figure 6

There are two crucial facts about baby clothing:

It needs to be washed frequently
It never wears out, because it doesn't fit for long enough to get worn

The Spaceboy Sloo uniform is one of the many examples that demonstrates that the garment industry manages to blow all its creativity and taste on kid's clothing, leaving nothing left for a single interesting men's shoe or jumpsuit. Felix's Spaceboy Sloo outfit was designated 0-3 months. To his father's dismay, you cannot buy Spaceboy Sloo livery in the size for 400 months.

Nor can you buy the Spaceboy Sloo official footwear in men's sizes. Neither is the tabasco-pepper-disguise bivouac sack available for those over five feet long. But you can get one if you're a baby. It came in a wrinkly brown envelope from an emporium in Cambridge, Mass., with not so much as a card to show who sent it.

Figure 4: Sent anonymously but with impeccable taste.

Figure 5: not available in your size

Figure 6: Until new stuff fits, you can always lend it to your blue monkey

The summer

Summer in the Bay Area has been warm so far. Nonetheless, Felix has managed to take a few more field trips to follow on his fondly remembered herpetile venture.

He went to lovely Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve in late June. Rancho S. Antonio has wide, gentle, flat paths that many parks lack, so it is often crawling with strollers. The open space preserve is built partly around an old farm, which includes a building from the 1850s, one of the oldest structures in the Bay Area. It's a working farm, but with easy access for visitors, and Felix visited several interesting domesticated animals, including domesticated chickens, domesticated goats, domesticated sheep, a domesticated sow and her ten four-day-old domesticated, but not housetrained, piglets.

A short time after meeting the piglets, Felix and his dad encountered this dad and his kids using the path. The California Quail is the state bird of Felix's home state. If you think that that should have been obvious from the name, keep in mind that the California Gull is the state bird of Utah.

Figure 7: Felix meets a proud dad and two of his five children

At the very end of May, Felix took his dad to the airport to fetch his summer guest. Maude first met Felix when he was half this age and half this size, in April. Maude's visit is exposing Felix to important French words, including coucou, la levure, and la libellule, which is what he is simulating when he is lying on his belly in your arms and flying through the air—the dragonfly, that is, not the yeast.

Maude, in the meantime, is learning critical English vocabulary, such as poop, knead, and perhaps. Felix illustrates some of the vocabulary lessons.