Setri at 6 months

That big half-year milestone has been and gone, and I guess it marks the passing of a significant chunk of Setri's babyhood. It's amazing to think of all the developmental stages he has been through, and how many are still to come. It's also amazing to think that this time last year we didn't have him. To me, that part of my life pre-Setri seems so distinct, and so distant, it's almost hard to imagine that not so long ago he didn't exist.

Physical:

We actually haven't weighed Setri since ~5 months, when he weighed 11kg and measured 75cm long. It seems like he hasn't really put on any noticeable weight since then, and his thighs have gotten noticeably leaner, presumably from all the crawling. More like legs than fat little hams, with noticeably less cellulite on his fat little bum... it was the cutest baby cellulite ever, I'm kind of sorry to see less of it! Let's say he still isn't exactly a skinny baby, but I like it that way :) The rolls on his 'sausage arms' have been diminishing, to the extent where we can see white stripes where the fat rolls blocked the sun from tanning the skin!

His hair is now quite definitively curly, in beautiful brown ringlets. At the back and sides of his head it tends towards wavy. He definitely got a 50:50 cross between Gam's hair and mine! I still don't think he particularly looks like either one of us, but my lord he is cute. I know I'm supposed to think that, being his mother, but I reckon even if I tried my hardest to be objective I'd still think he was exceptionally beautiful (Gam says I'm just like any other deranged parent, mind).

His motor skills are still pretty advanced for his age. He can use pincer grip to pick up a currant, but he doesn't yet have the skills to get something that small into his mouth. A cherry tomato or sultana poses no problem, however.

Setri does not, as yet, have even a single tooth. Two bumps where his top teeth will be have been there for quite some time now, but he is showing no signs of teething (apart from wanting to gnaw on everything, which he has been doing for months now). He can bite so hard with just his gums that he has bruised my finger, I don't think I look forward to him having teeth... I think it won't be long before he draws blood when he finally gets his first teeth...

Getting around:

Setri's crawling has improved out of sight over the last couple of weeks. He can now really scoot around pretty fast, though much faster on the bed or the grass than our wooden floor. He doesn't get much opportunity to crawl on the grass yet because we have a big problem with nasty, aggressive large black ants. They bite and sting and are very painful, and so we restrict Setri to a small area of lawn out the front where we and our pest guy have nailed most of the ants and is thus relatively ant-free. Now he can crawl faster I am forever hauling him back onto the grass after he scrambles his way over to the gravel path to try and put rocks in his mouth. Better to eat grass than rocks, I figure. He has also taken to exploring a bigger area of the house- previously he was content (actually that's not quite the right word, but never mind) to stick to crawling around our lounge area. He is also mastering going from sitting to crawling and from crawling to sitting, but he doesn't yet have the brains to figure out that he can go from lying to sitting via crawling, so if he's lying down and he wants to sit he just whinges and does his 'landed fish' impression.

Setri seems to be growing out of his bad habit of whinging to us to fetch things for him rather than crawling to get them himself, especially if it's something he knows he isn't allowed to have, like Gam's BlackBerry or my laptop, whereupon he will employ stealth-crawling and get there in the quietest and quickest fashion possible. However, because he knows he can crawl he also has a nasty habit of throwing tantrums when I lie him down in the bouncer (which I only use when we're outside, to keep him away from the ants). He wants to get out and crawl around, and often I can't let him, so I lie him right down so he can't get out of it. Or rather he can, these days, but it is rather awkward. Over the last couple of weeks I have taken to allowing him to stand up hanging onto a large, overturned plant pot on the grass while I hang clothes, risking ant-bites, rather than being screamed at. We did poison the main nests under the clothes line, but there are still too many for me to allow him to crawl around there.

 Setri doing his 'gummy' expression.

He has been able to stand supporting his own weight since he was about 9 weeks old, but it is only since he turned 6 months that I'm comfortable to let Setri stay standing without me positioned with my hands ready to grab him should he fall. He has only fallen twice: once on the wood floor- a fairly controlled fall, thankfully, and once on the grass (a full-on fall that scared him but obviously didn't hurt him because he didn't even whimper). He can stand for a good 5+ minutes without getting tired and starting to complain.

 'Side-gummy'. Makes him look like a cute little doll, or an alien. I can't decide.

He hasn't yet put 2 and 2 together and figured out how to pull himself up on things- he's not very good at staying balanced in a crawling position while reaching up with one hand is the main reason why, I think, because I have definitely seen him thinking about pulling himself up! [UPDATE 6/11/2010: I spoke too soon, he finally did it last night, while Gam was there to watch, no less! Gam was pretty pleased to be there to witness a 'first']. He can 'cruise' the furniture while standing up, but it's very slow and awkward, and he really doesn't move sideways more than about 30cm or so. Mostly he just stands still, it's only if there is something nearby that he wants- e.g. the remote control- that he will try and cruise.


Communication:

Setri definitely understands a greater number of words than he did at 5 months. I figured out that he knew who 'Daddy' was when I was talking to him one afternoon in the bedroom and upon hearing the word 'daddy', Setri's head turned towards the bedroom door to see if Gam was coming in! He wouldn't have a clue who 'Mummy' is, I think, though (despite my often referring to myself in the third person in the hope he might at least learn the word. *cough*). He now knows the word 'fan', 'jump', 'dance' (soooo cute! I could watch that all day- he even throws in some footwork now), 'sit', 'weewee',  'come', 'give' (really in the sense to let go of something- I thought it better than trying to teach him 'give', 'let go' and 'drop' (especially since 'drop' to Setri is a game where he throws himself backwards onto the bed), so I apply this one to getting him to hand over or at least drop his spoon or any other object, as well as getting him to let go a handful of my hair or Feifei's fur!) and 'Feifei' and 'Xiaoxiao'. I'm pretty sure he also understands 'water' and 'more'. Not so sure about 'bye bye' (we've been saying that one for a while, when Gam goes off to work or I leave Setri to be minded by Gam while I do some chores). He probably knows quite a few other words and I just haven't cottoned on and tested him yet. It is really quite surprising how switched on a 6 month-old baby is! It's also a bit scary- perhaps I say some things that I shouldn't (like Mikey!!) and I won't find out until it's too late! From reading those 'baby development' emails I get on a monthly/weekly basis (depending on the source), you'd think that Setri would only just now be learning to respond to his name.

In terms of the sounds Setri makes, he is still not engaging in the so-called canonical babbling (repetitive syllables- bababa, dadada etc.) that a lot of  babies supposedly do at this age. He says plenty of vowel-consonant combinations, but very rarely does he create strings of the same v-c combination in that stereotypical way [UPDATE 7/11/2010- in the last couple of days he has started canonical babbling. Mostly 'dadadadadada', with also a bit of 'lalalalala' and 'yayayayaya']. He has recently been exploring the upper reaches of his vocal range. Gam and I euphemistically call it 'singing', but it's more like semi-melodic squealing and squarking (as opposed to what we like to call Setri's 'psycho-squeal'). It's loud. He also makes what can only be described as cajoling noises, usually aimed at the cats, but sometimes at objects he wants but are out of reach.

'Socialising' at Nest Nappies

Social:

For a while after my parents visited, Setri seemed friendlier and more engaged with other people- a little bit readier with a smile than he used to be. Now he seems to have gone back to his usual serious self, hardly ever smiling for anyone but Gam and I. So I'm going to have to get out and socialise him more with other people and kids. We do have people over every few weeks, and take Setri shopping with us to the same stores where people kind of know him, but I suppose it's not quite the same level of engagement that he'd have if I took him on dedicated social outings. There's a local playgroup I'm going to start attending, and I'll make more of an effort to catch up in person with the few other girls I know with babies Setri's age.

Getting put in his place by a little girl!

One social outing we undertook recently- we took him to a 'cocktail party' to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of everyone's favourite modern cloth nappy store, Nest Nappies, in Paddington, and Setri 'played' with other babies for the first time. When I say played I mean he sat on a mat next to them and they all played with toys. It was very funny, Setri sat next to a tiny little 8mo girl who kept taking his toys, and Setri would try pathetically to get them back but really just let himself get totally pwned by this cute little girl. There was another older baby (also around 8-9 months, I guess) who kept making excited shrieking noises, and every time she did, Setri looked like he was about to cry. She made him very nervous! He was very well behaved, but Gam and I were there the whole time. Unfortunately he screamed in the car all the way home, something he has done ever since we took him to get his 6 month vaccinations. He just screams and screams and screams. It makes for a loooong car trip, and is really sad because he used to love car trips. It's as if he thinks that every time he is in the car now we are going to take him to get needles. I really hope he gets over it. We are trying to make trips pleasant- on the last one we tried to bribe/distract him with strawberries (his favourite food), but it only worked for a few seconds [UPDATE 7/11/2010: Car trips this weekend were fine, thank god!].

Setri with his good friend Feifei

Setri does try very hard to engage socially with Feifei and Xiaoxiao. He talks to them, cajoles them to come to him, and gives them friendly smiles. He can't for the life of him figure out why they aren't won over! Feifei will come near Setri, and permit handfuls of his fur to be pulled out, if I am there, whereas Xiaoxiao sensibly still won't have anything to do with him.

Trying to avoid a nap.

Sleep:

Night-time is not so good as it used to be. Setri tends to sleep solidly from about 7.30pm-2am (with a break at around 10pm when I get him up and put him in a night nappy and feed him, as we are going to bed). He is still sleeping in our bed, although I will occasionally put him to sleep in his cot during the day. During the morning he doesn't actually wake, but cries and wriggles in his sleep. He tends to settle if I wake him (he's typically not hungry) and then re-settle him, but he is extraordinarily difficult to wake. Sometimes we have resorted to sitting him upright and gently slapping his cheeks, and even that doesn't always work! So we often get up tired these days. Normally, Setri wakes up at around 6am. If he's had a bad night, he will typically fall into a peaceful sleep about 15 minutes before our alarm goes off, so we have a tantalising 15 minutes of sweet sweet sleep before having to force ourselves to wake up for the day. Even then he doesn't generally do me the favour of staying asleep for long. I have taken to napping during the day a few times a week to catch up on sleep, but I think Gam and I have both developed a chronic, low-level sleep deprivation. Gam makes his worse by staying up really late on the weekend. I get Setri up and out of the bedroom so he can sleep in til 8 or 9am, but even so Gam only winds up with 6-7 hours sleep. I feel reaaaally wrecked if I stay up past 11pm these days, because I simply don't get a chance to catch up on sleep.

Setri does, however, have a really endearing habit these days of either putting his arms out for a cuddle so he can be cuddled to sleep on my chest, or simply clambering on top of me to fall asleep. It's the sort of thing almost anyone would frown upon, but frankly I love it. He's only going to be a baby for a short time, and quite possibly might be the only baby I ever have, so I am going to make the most of everything. I love him to bits, and if he wants a cuddle he gets a cuddle. He has also started letting me know when he's ready for bed (I can't quite explain how he communicates that, but it's fairly clear when he does).

His ball is still his favourite toy.

Play:

Another endearing, if frustrating habit, is Setri's utter adoration of Gam. These days Gam cannot so much as shift in his chair in the study while I'm trying to settle Setri, without Setri pricking up his ears and looking around hopefully to see if Daddy is coming to play with him! It's just beautiful, and quite hilarious, to see Setri do his 'full body waggle' and flap his arms and legs and squeal with excitement when Gam comes into the bedroom to play with him. Gam is the one who engages in the most risky play, Setri's favourite. He loves to be held upside down by his ankles and swung over the bed, to be thrown onto the bed, thrown up into the air. I only ever do the most tame versions of these (e.g. saying 'drop!' and watching Setri fling himself backwards onto the bed) and I am consequently considered rather unexciting in comparison.

 Gam made Setri a rattle from a pimenton tin.

Setri has also shown the first signs of a sense of humour- for example blowing a raspberry on my cheek when I have asked him for a kiss, or copying what we do to him, and pulling up my shirt to blow a raspberry on my tummy, or Gam's neck.  He has also recently started thinking it's funny to bite the loose skin on my tummy :( That's not just unpleasant because it reminds me of its presence, it's unpleasant because he has one hell of a bite on him and it bruises! I'm pretty sure I've seen a smug little grin when I have told him not to touch something, and he has feinted, pretended he's going to play with something else, before darting forward and trying to grab whatever it is I've told him he can't have.

Tomato face.

Feeding:

Setri has increased his solids intake by quite a lot since hitting 6 months. We're doing baby-led weaning, so I don't really measure his intake, but it's a noticeable increase. He seems to alternate between days where he will eat a whole lot of solid food, and days where he seems to only want a small amount.

We are growing a few different things in our garden at the moment, and it is really satisfying to be able to give Setri food we have grown ourselves. He is a big fan of cherry tomatoes, which are just starting to ripen, and he still loves to chew on a bit of mint or basil or lettuce. Our loquat trees (already established when we moved in) produced a few loquats that weren't eaten by birds or possums, so Setri has also enjoyed homegrown loquat (something I'd never tried before moving into our house). I yesterday harvested my first eggplant, so Setri will get to enjoy (hopefully) that too.


With regard to the kinds of foods Setri enjoys, there have been quite a few surprises. It can depend on the time of day, his level of tiredness and all sorts of things, but he has been surprisingly indifferent to some foods I was sure he'd love (rockmelon, pawpaw) and incredibly keen on some things I expected him to be fairly indifferent to! Cucumber, grilled zucchini and grilled green capsicum, for example... I know I used to hate cooked capsicum when I was a kid... I also gave him some blue cheese to try a couple of weeks ago. Not a particularly strong one, but it surprised me that he liked it! Babaghanoush, too, raw garlic and all! I am still reasonably sure that his gut reacts badly to wheat and dairy, however. A few days ago I let him try some sour cherry jam, which he enjoyed, so I then offered him some pomegranate molasses, and his little face puckered up from the sour taste and he started to cry! I also let him have a taste of Gam's chilli (con carne) a week or so ago, and he cried because it was too hot, but I followed it up with a fingerful of natural yoghurt and he was fine. I don't really say no to him trying anything except chunks of nuts or alcohol (which we hardly ever have anyway). Unfortunately he seems to enjoy drinking my coffee... so much for that being an acquired taste. I don't have sugar in my coffee either! Lately if I'm having a coffee I will offer Setri a cup of water first. He knows it's not the same, but it seems to placate him somewhat.

His cup-drinking skills have also improved a lot over the last month or so. He still couldn't drink from a cup without me holding it for him (if I didn't want him to spill it after only a sip or two), but in terms of his ability to take in liquid from a cup and swallow, he can manage more gulps and swallows without having to take a breath than he used to. Unfortunately he still backwashes in a big way, which is a bit gross if he's just eaten and I let him share my cup...

After his 6 month needles.

Toileting:

Something that really interests me about Setri's development over the last month is that he has taken to stealth-pooing. He waits until I put him into his cot and- here's the key thing- leave the room. It's not like it happens at a particular time of day, either, because I don't put him in his cot to sleep, I only put him in there so he can amuse himself with his toys and there is less risk of him crawling off the bed. At a guess I'd say 9 poos out of 10 now occur in this manner.

Now, I would put that down to chance, except for the fact that Setri now knows how to wee on command. I'd kind of suspected this for a while. When his nappy is off on the change table I would exhort him to 'weewee' (so as to save myself from being peed on and to save a nappy), and he'd hold my gaze, his transverse abdominal muscles would clench, he'd grunt a little, and more often than not he would wee. Sometimes he wouldn't, and would seem to get frustrated with me asking him to. Could've been crazy parent syndrome, I thought. We'd wait and see. Well, one day when I asked him to 'weewee', Setri caught my eye, and he gave a little smile that told me he knew exactly what he was doing. He now routinely gives that little smile, and nearly always wees on command, even if it's only a little wee, whether we're on the change table or in the bath. I am so impressed with that, because while I have read about 'elimination communication' (kinda-sorta early toilet training), I have also read that children don't develop awareness and control over the muscles required to go to the toilet until much later. I was a believer in EC, but it really seemed like too much work. Setri seems to have developed some degree of toileting awareness on his own, and I really wasn't expecting it this early. Frustratingly, the potty I bought before he was born (along with a whole heap of other baby stuff) is far too big for him. It's frickin' enormous- and Setri is an enormous baby. Seriously, that potty must be built for large (3yo?) toddlers, it would be too big for a small toddler. So now I'm faced with the task of hunting down a small potty to try him on, to see if we can take this toilet-training thing a bit further. I don't know what my chances are of getting him to poo in his potty, seeing as he seems to want to poo when I'm out of the room, but at least I can get him used to the idea of doing wees in one.

He has also tried on numerous occasions lately to attract my attention when he needs to wee when his nappy is off. It used to be the case that I'd discover he'd weed only when I would notice him slipping around on the wooden floor in a puddle of wee, unable to crawl (yuck!), but lately he has taken to waving his hands to ask to get up and giving me earnest looks, which are completely lost on me until he pees a short time later. I really have to get better about picking up on those cues, or it could be a missed opportunity for toilet-training.

Anyway, that's been my big surprise for the month, I didn't expect to be addressing anything to do with toilet-training so early! These days 12 months would be considered early. Though before Setri was born my mum (who TT'd me at a fairly relaxed pace) told me that my Grannie (dad's late mother) claimed to have TT'd Dad's oldest brother at 3 months. "More like toilet-timing than toilet training", scoffed Mum. At the time I was inclined to agree with her, but now... who knows?

 Setri's bucket bath looks an awful lot smaller than it did when he was 2 weeks old!

The latest in a grand tradition of anti-porn screeds in the mainstream media

Gam sent me a link to this garbage anti-porn article by a (groan) 'Professor of Women's Studies' that I had missed because it was published in the opinion section on the Brisbane Times website. I have so little time to blog these days (let alone do all the stuff that I should be getting done!) that I shouldn't have even read it, knowing I wouldn't be able to help penning a suitably ranty response, but at least I kept it pretty much in point form rather than writing an essay like I did last time.

==================================
Gail Dines on 'porn'. Rather than addressing her sweeping generalisation of the broad diversity of tastes catered for in the real world of porn, I will refer you here to show you exactly what kind of bunk is created when some ignoramus takes a position based on some stupid stereotype of porn. Hereafter just assume that every time Dines writes the word 'porn' she is referring to something hardcore featuring a generic blonde with anus lipstick and silicone boobs being roughly penetrated by 'any number' of well-equipped, ungentlemanly brutes.


"The men they date, have sex with and marry are increasingly being brought up on a steady diet of porn, and the more they watch, the less capable they are of forming connected, intimate relationships."

• Proof? Cite studies?


"The porn these men consume looks nothing like your father's Playboy."

• Really? The same Playboy that 'women's studies' professors spent years railing against as sexist and harmful? I own a Playboy collection ranging through vintage and modern issues spanning nearly 50 years, and the old ones, while being incredibly tame in terms of the visual depictions of women (and extraordinarily literary in their content), are written with a now quaint, old-fashioned sexist bent, despite being reasonably progressive and liberal for their time in terms of women's sexuality.

• It might not 'look like' your father's Playboy, but that's because the content in dear old Dad's Playboy is now pretty much PG rated in the wider context of the amount of flesh it's permissible to display in any visual media in this day and age. Why *should* porn look like your father's Playboy? Playboy never called itself porn anyway, it was nutbag feminists and religious extremists (who have a lot more in common than either group would care to admit) who labelled it such.


"Consumers are catapulted into a world of cruel and brutal sex acts designed to dehumanise women"

- What Dines is saying is that porn is a vast, anti-woman conspiracy. It's not as simple as people wanting to get off, oh no! No, it's a James Bond-style plot hatched by people (i.e. men) who HATE WOMEN and want to victimise them. How can something so preposterous get published in a mainstream newspaper? How? How can someone who spews such tripe, with a blatantly sexist, anti-male bent, be employed at an institution of higher learning?

This is what really gets my goat about anti-porn campaigners. Sheila Jeffries, Dines, they are all highly paid 'academics' who aren't subject to the kind of rigorous review and standards that academics in other fields are subject to. Their extremism is rewarded because they are in a field characterised by nutbaggery and populated by nutbags. It doesn't matter to what extent their work is based on crazed and unfounded claims, because the more it is, the more it is rewarded. Alternate views don't get a look in- women who aren't in complete lockstep (which is most of them, I'll wager), are ostracised and pilloried as brainwashed victims of the invented conspiracy that these overpaid academic feminists spend their careers railing against. They might be respected in their field, but that's because the field is populated not with scientists, who are compelled to adhere to certain standards of objectivity, but with fellow extremists. Universities employ these feminist nutbags because they're big in their field, but in doing so they do themselves a disservice and undermine the very standards in research and education that they purport to uphold. It's a disgrace.


"In the vast majority of porn today, sex is not about making love... connection, empathy, tenderness, caring, affection- are missing, and in their place are those we normally associate with hate- fear, disgust, anger, loathing and contempt".

• Outright bullshit. Porn was never meant to be about portraying sex as being about making love. Sex itself is primarily not about connection, empathy, tenderness etc. etc. It's a biological urge. It can be done in that context, sure, but the other- feeling sexual pleasure just for pleasure's sake- is no less legitimate. There is such a massive, mind-boggling variety of porn out there, and I am 100% certain that Professor (ugh) Dines pulled that grand, sweeping generalisation out of her arse. It's a popular misconception, and it's only popular because people like Dines get published and people like me, who actually watch porn, don't.


"In the vast majority of porn today... as [the female performer] is being roughly penetrated by any number of men, she is being called vile names such as whore, slut, and worse."

• Proof? In the vast majority of porn? How many men? Called names? If you're going to imply that you've studied the stuff and looked at the numbers, cough up some data, woman. Where was that published, exactly?

• Also, the insinuation is that somehow sex that might be characterised as rough, a quickie, fast-and-furious, is somehow non-consensual and degrading to women. Lots of women like rough sex! I like rough sex! If I was a 'professor of women's studies' I might be tempted to pull a sweeping, unfounded pseudo-statistical generalisation out of my arse, such as "a majority of women like rough sex", but I'm not, so I won't. I am confident in saying, however, that it is likely that in the vast majority of porn depicting rough sex, whether with multiple partners or not, the sex is 100% consensual.


"We often hear that porn is all about fun and fantasy, so it has no real effect. My interviews with university-age men tell a very different story."

• See, if this woman's work and any of the journals that published it had even a modicum of scientific credibility, any reviewer would be screaming "SELECTION BIAS, you idiot, SELECTION BIAS!!". What kind of 'university-aged' man would volunteer to speak to some anti-porn-campaigner women's studies professor about their own porn habits? No sane person would believe that their confessional would be treated objectively by an anti-porn 'researcher' (who has already decided what she would like the outcome of her 'research' to be, thankyouverymuch). Her 'research' is likely to consist of interviews with young men who believe that porn is a problem for them, not a broad spectrum of young men in the community. Dines doesn't acknowledge this, of course. What matters to her is not the credibility of her data, just that it backs up her preconceived notions.



"Unlike previous generations, these boys and men have unlimited access to hard-core images 24 hours a day".

• Does that conjure up an image of some dishevelled male, frazzled by hours of self-abuse, in a darkened room lit only by a computer screen displaying pornographic imagery? You betcha! Men, given a computer, will do nothing but access hard-core porn 24 hours a day! They can't help themselves! It's there, so they just keep chugging it down, like an addictive mixture of red cordial and heroin.



"Many of the men I talk to believe that porn sex is what women want, and they become upset and angry when their sex partner, perhaps their wife, girlfriend, or a one night hook-up, refuses to look or behave like their favourite porn star."

• Oh. My. Goodness. So much wrong with this claim it's hard to know where to start. I'll start from the end and work backwards.

• 1. Let's spell this out. Guy gets lucky and convinces a girl to hook up with him. Alright!! Sex is on the menu! Now choose the most likely option:

• a) Guy can't believe his luck, starts tearing off his clothes in a hurry so he can get some action in case he's about to wake up and finds it's all a dream.

•  b) Guy sits random hook-up down and says 
"Ok, go to the bathroom, put on these heels and bung on a bit more eyeliner. By the way I'm going to call you Jenna while we're doing it, I hope you won't mind." Then, when the woman in question laughs in his face, he flies into a rage.

• 2. Let's tease apart the rest of what Dines has said...

• A man can believe that 'porn sex is what women want' (let's ignore the fact that 'porn sex' in fact encompasses every kind of sex known to humankind and keep it within the narrow-minded spirit that the author intended this passage to be read in, shall we?).

•  A man can be affronted and angry when his wife or girlfriend (let's ignore the preposterous idea that a one-night hook-up would be subjected to this one, shall we?) refuses to 'look or behave like [the man's] favourite porn star.'

• I think a reasonable person would agree that a reasonable man who somehow convinced himself that 'porn sex is what women want' (haha) would, when confronted with information to the contrary, adjust his view in light of this new information.

• I think a reasonable person would agree that a man who not only convinced himself that 'porn sex is what women want' but then got angry when confronted with the fact that his wife or girlfriend did not, in fact, want this so-called 'porn sex', could quite reasonably be labelled deranged.

Q.E.D. Dines has admitted that many of the men she has talked to are deranged. Now, is she saying that a substantial proportion of men in the population at large are thus deranged?


"Next to the screaming orgasms and sexual gymnastics of porn sex (again, we must ignore reality and adhere to the Dines Dictionary definition of 'porn sex' to comprehend this statement), real sex with real women starts to feel boring and bland."

• Given that Dines has admitted, albeit unwittingly, that her sample is subject to the worst kind of selection bias and her subjects are, in fact, deranged, this statement actually makes sense. In that context.

• I feel confident in saying, however, that contrary to Dines' implication that all men who view pornography (and thus pretty much all men) are wont to view real sex with indifference and instead prefer porn... ROFLMAO!!!!!! What kind of idiot would seriously suggest something like that???!!




"These men have become so accustomed to porn sex (refer to Dines Dictionary) that some are disappointed by their own sexual performance."

• Wait, only some? Not 'many'? So, while 'many' men in Dines' sample held women to a (stereotypical) porn standard, only 'some' held themselves to the same standard. This again confirms the fucked-up-ness of the sort of guy who would talk to a confirmed anti-porn feminist about their porn habits. Again, I say, NOT representative of the male population as a whole.


"They need to pull up the porn images in their head in order to have an orgasm with their partner."

• Do I need to spell it out? The sort of men who talk to this woman are sufferers of serious sexual disorders! That there is some diagnostic criteria for severely dysfunctional sexual behaviour. If not mental disorders in general, going by some of the other things she has said about these men.

• How, then, is it not extremely offensive and sexist to extrapolate this data obtained by interviewing a subset of the male population who suffer from mental and sexual dysfunction across the male population as a whole? WHY is this tripe being published?



"I had been somewhat sceptical of the addiction model, thinking that it was a way for men to avoid taking responsibility for their porn use. However... sex and relationship therapists Wendy Maltz and Larry Maltz discuss in their book The Porn Trap ..."

• Hang on right there. You're an academic and your reference for this pile of crap you're writing is a couple of sex therapists who wrote a sensationalist, anti-porn book. Honestly! This speaks volumes about the field of women's studies and the universities that pay fat salaries to a select group of women whose profession is spouting unfounded crap.




"While men may share their favourite porn stories, they don't tend to talk to each other about their addictive behaviour..."

• I'm sorry, men what? 'Porn stories'?! I can't say that men don't have special men-only gatherings where they swap their 'favourite porn stories'. Whilst I suspect this is a figment of Dines' imagination, if 'men' did engage in this particular activity I suppose that as a woman I wouldn't be included. From what I've seen of porn, which is probably more than Dines, porn that does have a story is the exception these days. What does that leave to swap? "So then this chick walks into a room where there's a couch, and there's this guy and pretty soon most of their clothes are off and they're doing it". "Awesome! That sounds just like the one I saw last week, except it had two chicks!". "Well the last one I saw didn't even have a guy, there was just this one chick, and a vibrator..."



"If we are really going to tackle porn, however, we... need to build a long-term, multi-pronged movement that involves building coalitions, grassroots education programs, and media strategies that eventually lead to cultural change."

• What, like the current media strategy of printing only anti-porn screeds, typically written by overpaid academic feminists with a tenuous grasp on reality?

• And why do we need to 'tackle porn'? Porn is not the problem! A minority of people have the kind of problem with porn that Dines describes, and the solution is not to obliterate pornography. Mental problems and sexual disorders require appropriate treatment, but we don't need to put the rest of the world in a straitjacket to treat the problems of a small number of people.

• As is typical of anti-porn screeds published in the mainstream media, all porn is lumped in the same basket with no acknowledgement of the diversity of tastes that it caters to. Porn is easily more reflective of human diversity than any other mainstream visual entertainment medium and I'll wager that any real research would back that up. We won't see anything approaching real research from the likes of Dines, however.


"As long as we have porn, women will never be seen as full human beings deserving of all the rights that men have... There is no room for porn in a just society"


• Oh what a crock. As Gam likes to point out, anti-porn campaigners like Dines exhibit a massive blind spot when it comes to gay porn, because it undermines bullshit arguments such as the one above. It's a stupid statement, an unfounded one, and underscores the fact that the academic credentials of anyone in the field of 'women's studies' are immediately suspect. Dines' views are rightly relegated to the opinion pages, but she's masquerading as some sort of social scientist when she really has no more credibility in this field than the average religious nutbag who might pen a similar anti-porn screed. Professor my arse. How can someone get paid to come up with such crap?

Sitting

Yesterday Setri managed to get to a sitting position on his own for the first time. I think it was an accident and he just accidentally sat back while in a crawling position, but he stayed up, so I think it counts as a first!

Setri at 5 months

23 weeks old.

Physical:

At 5 months Setri is sporting a head of dark brown curls- finally the curls make an appearance! Gam didn't think it was going to happen, Setri's hair looked straight for so long. I figured there would have to be curls at some point- with Gam's tight, curly afro hair there just had to be! Setri's curls are pretty big, rather than afro, though.

24 weeks.

Setri now weighs 11kg and is roughly 75cm long. I think that makes him about as big as a very large 8-month-old or a mid-sized 11-12 month-old. The extra weight hasn't been going on as chub, though- his thigh rolls have diminished in number to just one on each leg, plus an extra crease above his right knee. Just as well, or he'd be wrapped in newspaper instead of all his nice expensive modern cloth nappies... he is on the largest setting for nearly all of them and I'm praying his fat little bottom doesn't get any fatter!

 24 weeks old

Whenever he gets his paws on something new, Setri passes things from one hand to another and studies them closely... Gam and I call it his 'Dr Setri'.

 'Dr Setri' studies his sippy-cup.

He grabs at everything. He's so grabby, I'll be carrying him past things and a chubby little arm will shoot out at anything and everything. Likewise, I'll hand him to Gam for a minute and Setri's hand will immediately be aimed at something on the desk. His hand-eye coordination is getting quite good too. Probably my fault it's so good- whenever he tried grabbing the spring of the Jolly Jumper as it hung from the doorway I would swing it and tell him he would only be allowed to put it in his mouth if he could catch it. Needless to say this was an impossible task at first, but it didn't take him long to get the hang of grabbing it while it was moving... I think this skill has translated into improved hand-eye coordination for fast grabbing of stationary objects... oops.

 Hehe his bum crack is showing because I didn't do the nappy up tightly enough... so cute :)

Possibly throwing... we still can't figure out if it's deliberate or whether he just accidentally lets go of things and flings them away... given that it never seems to happen when we first give him an object to play with, always after he seems to be getting bored or disinterested, I'm inclined to think deliberate, but I won't call it yet.


He shakes everything to see if it will make a noise. Nappies, toys, items of clothing- anything we give him will be given a vigorous shake in order to determine whether it might make a pleasing rattle/squeak/dinging noise.

Totally 'devo' because I didn't get him the phone- even though it was right in front of him and he was more than capable of crawling forward a couple of inches to get it himself! 

He cries his 'sad cry' when something he wants is taken away from him (i.e. tantrum). Also when something he wants is not brought to him... even if he's capable of getting it, the default most of the time is to whinge so someone will do the hard work for him.

Granted, when I took this photo he was crawling backwards rather than forwards, but hey you couldn't tell if I didn't mention it :P

Is crawling! When the 5 month mark ticked over he was still pretty much at the 'two steps forward, one step back' stage, but now he crawls forward all the time. Slowly and doggedly, but it's in one direction! He can make it just over a metre, so far. Typically less if he knows we are present and can fetch for him whatever it is he is crawling towards... He is very motivated when we place a cup of water on the floor for him to crawl towards, and gets 'rewarded' with a drink. Toys: a little bit motivated. Parents: not motivated at all (after all, why don't we come to him? Clearly if we make him crawl we are just being mean!). UPDATE: a couple of days ago he had a day where he seemed to have forgotten how to crawl, only crawling backwards, and getting very frustrated, but the next day he was 'moving forward' well enough to give Julia Gillard a run for her money.

Setri loves to show off for Gam in his Jolly Jumper. Loves showing off for Gam full stop. When Gam gets home, or when he comes into the bedroom as Setri is just waking or is supposed to be heading off to sleep, Setri does a 'full body waggle' of excitement. It's so cute. He doesn't make the same effort for me!

He has started rolling over from front to back when he doesn't want to go to sleep, or when he wants to play or elicit a smile from us (mostly when he doesn't want to go to sleep). The cutest thing is now that he can crawl he can make his way over to me if I'm lying on the bed and semi-roll onto me so that his head is snuggled up on my arm or shoulder. He doesn't yet lift his head and shoulders when he's lying on his back though, which apparently he should be doing 'round about now.

He has started night-waking, something he did briefly around the 4-month mark. Somewhere in the AM Setri awakes and decides to do stuff that is more interesting than sleeping... like crawl to the bedside table in an attempt to steal Gam's BlackBerry (anything with a screen, particularly if it has buttons, is insanely tempting).

23 weeks.

Weirdly, for a few weeks it was as if he had completely forgotten how to roll from back to front. If he's flat on his back, he would just grizzle to be rolled over. And it's not that he was being lazy- I placed toys and desirable objects (the laptop!) for him to encourage him to reach and roll, to no avail. He would arch his back and try to flip himself over, but couldn't remember how to roll. Then all of a sudden, he started doing it again, no problems!

He can sit up by himself without supporting himself using his arms now, but one of his favourite games is to be sat up on the bed and then fling himself backwards so he falls back onto the bed. It's easy to tell when he's about to play this 'game', because he likes to catch my eye (or Gam's) and give a big grin before throwing himself onto his back. This is an extension of the 'drop' game, where Gam and I used to let him fall back onto the bed after letting him stand up... only problem is, occasionally we will sit him up on our laps only to have him try and fling himself backwards onto the floor. Obviously he hasn't succeeded yet, as that would be something he'd only try once, I imagine. This 'game' is the reason I have yet to get a photo of him sitting properly- every time I've got the camera ready to take a picture while Setri is sitting, he gets a big grin on his face and flings himself backwards!

Setri has also mastered the fine art of ignoring one's parents. While most of the time he will turn his head if we call his name, sometimes he will be far too interested in something else and not turn around until we repeatedly call or make an unexpected noise (e.g. clapping). I'm guessing this is normal?

 This spatula hangs from a doorway in our kitchen, along with a matching slotted spoon. Setri grabs at them every time he goes past- they're great toys!

Feeding:

I'd say Setri is currently still getting 95-98% of his nutritional intake from breast milk, but these days I'm making an effort to let him eat some kind of solid food at least once a day, even if it's only a taste.

We bought him a high chair- one of the portable ones that clamps onto the table. I had thought we would be able to get away without something like this, as he could eat while sitting on our laps. Indeed he can, but one thing we noticed very early on is that Setri really prefers to make eye contact with one of us while he eats. It's like he needs to take his cues about the food he's eating from us, and he likes to see us eating the same thing. This was pretty difficult to do while having him seated on my lap, and he seems to love sitting in the high chair. Sometimes I'll put him in it just so he can play with things while seated at the table, too.

 Water is still one of Setri's favourite 'foods'. 23 weeks. 

Setri now bites his food and chews it up- if he takes too big a bite he will spit some of it out, but he always bites in preference to sucking when he is eating solid food these days. He's been trying all sorts of things, no holds barred. The only thing he really turned his nose up at was tinned sardines. He looked absolutely appalled, and very deliberately spat the whole lot out. I can't really blame him, they weren't very nice ones (even though they were the King Oscar brand, in olive oil, they weren't very good). We haven't given him anything with a lot of chilli, but quite a few things most Aussies would classify as a bit hot- e.g. thai chicken balls with fresh chilli in them, a bit of my 'Hot Mama' burger from Grill'd.

Another thing Setri is surprisingly not fond of is potato. He's had it mashed (with added breast milk), baked (with olive oil, herbs and a bit of duck fat) and fried (as fries, both chunky and shoestring) and seems to find it boring, Gam's and my enjoyment of them notwithstanding! It's not that he finds it offensive, he just doesn't seem to like it.

A bit fed up with me taking photos... 23 weeks.

Social:


He gives proper cuddles.

He gives slimy, open-mouth 'kisses', including to his toys after they 'kiss' him

Whinges and makes a straining, 'unnhhhh' noise when he wants something but can't get at it himself.

23 weeks.

Up until he hit 5 months he was still inventing new sounds and using them to death for a few days before moving on to the next one. Mostly they were non-speech- the new sounds variously consisted of farty noises (raspberries), bird-like noises, a cough when he wants something, or wants attention ('ahem ahem!'), a gasping cough/laugh when he wants attention (cough-gasp/whoop- it's very alarming!). Since he hit the 5 month mark he's once again been babbling a lot using speech sounds, without going on 'jags' of making a sound for days on end. He is still making his 'kissch' and 'kisschkissch' noises and getting better at them... so I'm convinced he says it when he wants kisses (or when we're playing a game where he usually gets them), and also saying it to his 'Lamby' toy that I often make give him 'kisses'... it should be noted that Gam is still convinced I'm mad for insisting that Setri is trying to say 'kiss' :P

He loves anything with a screen. Technology! 23 weeks.

Just before Setri hit 5 months, Gam and I got to go out together without him for the first time. We won tickets to a Will Studd cheese masterclass (which was awesome) and Setri was looked after by our wonderful friend Liz. I was very unsure as to how he'd handle it, as he had recently, for the first time, started indicating to us that he wanted to be held by other people (friends), only to start crying very shortly after being handed over for a cuddle. Liz said they had a 'good first half hour and a bad second half hour', which indicated to us that his crying probably had as much to do with the time of day as us being out (because otherwise he would have started crying as soon as we left).

 Visit from his 'Grumpa' and 'Grandma Teen'. 22 weeks.

We have resolved to try and go out a bit more without Setri, mostly for us but also partly to get him used to more people. My parents came to visit the day after Setri hit 5 months, and Mum looked after him for a couple of hours while Gam and I went to buy landscaping supplies, and she also took him out in the sling on her own for a couple of walks, and Setri was perfectly happy. He did cry towards the end of our landscaping supplies-jaunt, but only because he was hungry.

The first day or so my parents were here, Setri was pretty wary of them, but after Mum joined in the fun of playing games with Setri as he procrastinated going to sleep the first night, Setri decided she was one of the family and he liked all the extra attention. And my dad had a beard he could pull, so he was cool too. From what we saw during my parents' visit I think he would really thrive on the extra attention if he had grandparents living closer. Gam's parents haven't met him yet, and mine still live 6 hours away by car- I know they'd all like to see more of him; my mum wants to move to Brisbane but my dad is dead against moving.

 Auntie Rachelle (my cousin) and Uncle Chris came to visit. Setri has always been remarkably good for Rach, even when he was at a stage where he didn't really like being held by other people. 22 weeks old.

My dad, while he was visiting, expressed the opinion that I was too quick to attend to Setri's demands. I disagree. When Setri awakens and calls out, for example, I always hurry to the bedroom to talk to him and/or pick him up. Gam and I both think that our attentiveness (this doesn't translate into giving in when he throws a tanty over not being handed an object that he wants) has actually paid great dividends in that Setri hardly ever cries. If he wants us to come and get him from another room he will call out, and if he wants a feed he makes soft, conversational murmuring noises. The only time he ever cries is if he's in discomfort, fear, or pain (e.g. woken up with a pooey nappy, has become scared by a loud, unfamiliar noise, or has a bit of wind pain). I'm of the opinion that if we waited until Setri cried before attending to his needs then his first resort for everything would be to cry, because he would know that's what would work to get our attention. That would just be a pain, not to mention not a very good form of communication because we would be at a loss to tell exactly what it was he was crying about! At least now we've narrowed it down (plus he has different cries for different things).

 Visit to Bean Scene café, where Gam and I had our first date. 24 weeks old.

Setri still absolutely loves going places in the car (ever since we moved him to a regular car seat), and for walks. Just to look at all the new and interesting things- he's fascinated by absolutely everything, and remarkably well-behaved. He pretty much never whinges when we're out these days, not even when he gets tired.

It sounds dumb, but I've been enjoying this time so much that I have to restrain myself from getting all creepy and evangelical about parenthood on people who don't yet have a kid (a couple of people we know are thinking about it). But I honestly feel like people who don't do this are missing out on something completely and utterly awesome. Sure you could afford a fantastic around-the-world-trip for the cost of raising a kid to 18 years of age, but that's got nothing on the experience of watching a baby grow. I was never against having kids, but I think my mushiness over the whole thing now would make the old me sick. I can wholeheartedly understand why some people get a little bit addicted to it, even. Although I can't imagine having two kids close in age and not being able to devote the same kind of time to the second baby as one does to their first... I am doing my best to savour every minute of my time with Setri. The way we have been speeding through life, with him changing so quickly, gives me an appreciation of the importance of every day that I never had before. It's hard to explain... I just feel like he's going to be grown up before I know it, and I am going to miss this time of my life, while he won't remember a thing!