Moments of Discovery

A day short of turning 6 months old, Kole is doing everything but crawling, and he may have developed one of the senses that separates humans from the animals - a sense of his own being.
On the crawling - he has two stances right now. First is the body-surfing stance, essentially balanced on his belly button, hands and feet off the ground. He does this with the idea that his hands and feet are free to reach and kick. But then comes the on-all-fours look - where he's on his hands and knees, rocking slowly. Kathy and/or I will sit there encouraging him to move forward, putting a toy or something he wants out in front of him. But, instead of forward movement, he normally just reverts back to Stance A on the belly. He's getting ever so close - and Kathy and I recognize our fleeting final days of being able to contain him in one general area of the floor.
Another area of discovery is his hands. He looks like he's doing signing for the deaf - or perhaps doing a sock-puppet show without socks. He'll put his hands out, then anything is fair game ... the beauty-pageant wave, the open-close claw, the hippie on acid tripped out by watching his hand wave side to side in front of his eyes ... he'll get both hands working and it's quite amusing. One by-product of this has been mockery. The whole happy-hands thing has created a new world of mimicking. If he appears frustrated, or is obviously hungry and getting a quick case of the red-ass while a bottle is being made, all you have to do is start waving, or open-closing your hands like little chompers, and he'll immediately crack a smile and start doing his hands, putting them out and waving and clasping them.
Another trick for shutting him up when he's upset (are we veteran parents or what!) is to take him to a mirror. He likes what he sees so far. He's fascinated with either Kathy or I through a mirror, and I can only assume that he's fascinated by the prospect of noticing himself. I'll attach photos on this - he even has a little mirror that is one of about four things that dangle from one other little toy he has. But, if we take the mirror and lay it down he will find it, look at the image of himself and hold a frozen stare like a cat that just spotted a mouse. He puts his nose 1 or 2 inches from the mirror and stares. And stares. And stares. It's fun watching and imagining what's going on inside his mind.
He has a doctor's appointment on the 18th, so we'll have an accurate count of his measurements.