Exploring and getting stronger

What's more tastier than my own hand?

Raghav has finally discovered his hands and now they're always in his mouth. Sometimes he holds them together like he's going to recite poetry at an elocution. When he's not doing that he's constantly munching on them, sometimes with both in his mouth, pulling his jaws apart like Joker. Sometimes he's got two fingers in, like he's trying to whistle. He brings has hands together and sometimes tries to take them above his head.

When he notices someone else's hand he looks at it real close, and then tries to grab it and put their finger in his mouth. His motor skills are still not perfect, but he does manage to hold your finger and guide it towards his mouth; and doesn't like it if you cheat him and put his finger in his mouth instead.

He's started wanting to grab everything that comes close to him; whether it's the balloons hanging from his door, or the paintings in our hallway, when he goes close to these things while he's in our lap he bends to touch them with his hand and feel them. (He's probably wondering how he can put these things in his mouth, too.)

When we put our face close to him, he grabs it too. With Nalin he grabs his nose and tries to twist it, or tries to hang on from his mouth. With me he grabs my hair or my glasses. Once when I was kissing him on his cheeks, he tried to eat my chin.

His latest form of communication: "razzing", when he blows out spit and makes little bubbles with it. He has a razzing competition with Nalin on who can do it better -- Raghav wins hands down. Sometimes I hear him razzing away from his cot when he's just woken up.

He rubs his feet vigorously, making it very difficult to make him wear pajamas; he also manages to rub his socks away, even if they're the long ones that come up to his knees.

He has immense strength now; he's constantly creeping up and down. Earlier he had been mostly creeping down; we would put him at the top of his cot and by the time he fell asleep he would be curled up at the bottom corner of it.

Loves his Ikea arch

I found him hanging off his cot the other day. He'd been sleeping when I heard him call out to me. It's usually his way of telling me that he's up now and that he wants to be picked up or fed etc. I was still in the loo when I heard him call me. By the time I reached his cot he was hanging from it, holding the sheet with his hands, half his body up on the cot, and half hanging from it.

We put up the fourth side in his cot that very night.

He also keeps rotating, usually in a clockwise circle, when he's lying down. So, soon enough his head was hitting the bars on his cot. We had to put the cot bumpers to prevent that.

He has now started creeping up, too. When I put him on the fur rug with the Ikea arch over him to play with, soon enough he's crept up and off the fur rug and onto the carpet. He also tries to push up with his foot, one bum at a time. He almost turns, and has turned a couple of times randomly, but doesn't do it regularly yet.