Our 5 month-old hedonist

My boy is 5 months old! It's been an interesting past month in the life of the litol M. Linaban.

We've officially started him on solids. Most of the literature says to wait til the 6th month, and we really did. But one day the boy took a nosedive towards a spoon of yogurt and I realized we were actually resisting his I Wanna Eat Nao cues.

We've given him little tastes of stuff we ate - yogurt, hummus, curry, fruit, oatmeal etc before finally mashing up a piece of squash and feeding him a couple of tablespoons' worth. He made a face but gobbled it up all the same. I don't blame him. The stuff was blander than most of the stuff he'd had a taste of. A couple of days later, we gave him Cerelac (mainly because daddy said he'd eat it up if baby didn't like) which he at first ate sparingly. By the last few bites, he was literally shoving the whole spoon into his mouth. Lola Nanay, on the other hand is afraid we intend to make a habit out of feeding him artificial nommage. She says it'll spoil his appetite for other stuff.

We stopped giving him the cereal after two days since rashes appeared on his neck. He's still nosediving towards everything we eat tho. I guess his appetite is as curious as ever, cerelac or no.

One Sunday, we visited his great grandma up in the mountains. Tito Mark says they're a family of sweet tooths (sweet teeth?), so we brought ingredients for this tres leches cake recipe.

While mommy and Tito Mark baked (he did most of the work really), Manoy took a dip in the pool.

Big bathtub - M.

When the cake was done, great grandma gave the boy some whipped cream. Aha. The "genetic" sweet tooth explained.

Not only is his appetite (and poop) maturing, so is his sense of humor.

A couple of weeks ago, Falling objects were the funniest thing. Today, it's raspberries on the tummy and Frankenweenie.

Daddy and Mommy have been seeing horror films the past few weeks after the boy goes to bed for research. We saw Frankenweenie as a breather, and were surprised when a)the boy stayed up for it and that b)the boy appreciated it. Observe:

I thought kids couldn't appreciate tv or video yet? It's passive entertainment, and we don't intend to make a habit out of it, but lookit that boy go. If he asks for an undead puppy one day, blame Tim Burton.

He's also started mimicking our playtime gestures. We like nibbling on his rolls, and he seems to like it because he laughs. Sometime this week, he started nibbling back. 

The zombiepocalypse is nigh.

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The partner and I've been collecting video clips of the boy's antics. I see this turning into a video when he turns a year old. And though I've been sharing these clips privately with some of you, and this blog has always been the mother of oversharing, My feelings towards facebook have considerably soured.

Tito Janjan posted an article some weeks back about a family who uploads nothing of their daughter on facebook. It's because the facial recognition tool of fb (you know, that thing they do where they suggest you tag certain people before they even know about a certain photo?) hints at an identification project of a paranoid's wet dream. Read the article here.

I understand that facebook has replaced physical social interaction for valid reasons like actual physical distance. I also understand that even in real physical interactions, the urge to show photos of the cute boy in your life is overwhelming. But the difference with those albums (and this blog for that matter) is that people can choose to open the photo book or click the link to the blog post. The stuff that appear on our social media feeds are like ads you have little to no control over. Not too long ago, I was childless and on the receiving end of fb friends' photo floods of their kid (or selfie, or newly bought gadget, or yoga pose, or whatever it is that floats your ego) and I know it can get annoying. It reminds me of a story a classmate told of the time she'd been a PA on a set with Kris Aquino when her son was a baby. - She'd parade the boy around saying "ang cute cute nya noh?" and the crew would go "ang chaka naman" once the parade had passed. If any of you have felt bullied by my (or Lola Nanay's) overwhelming pride in this human being, may I apologize in behalf of every parent who worship their children's every sneeze. It's a strange thing how true the cheesy "my children changed my life" statement is, while we all end up hating our parents at one point or another.

Seriously. I worship this boy. I'm sorry for preaching the word of Malaya. His poop is miraculous.

Worshipping in public or turning your kid into passive entertainment for total strangers is not cool. The amount of literature and studies on the harm of training children to act for the pleasure of other people is too much to ignore (have you guys seen this awesome documentary, Starsuckers? Click this sentence if you haven't.). And if you don't like to read boring old articles, you just have to ask yourself, what went wrong with Miley Cyrus? Or Kris Aquino? hehe.

I'm even limiting stuff I post on here, although there's no way I can take back the NSFW newborn photos I posted when he was 6 days old that made a host of people from my college gush about his boy bits. I can, but the gushing has already happened.

Srsly guys, I can see this becoming awkward in 10 years (more or less).

I realize even this blog could lead to dangerous assumptions - the assumption that because the lot of you (loved ones or strangers) know about Malaya, you actually know him, without giving him the opportunity to introduce himself. Visit him in person and hold him a while while mommy and daddy grab a few z's. If you can't manage that, there's facetime, emails, texts.

No Tito Anton, standing outside our house with binoculars doesn't count.