Ren, you continue to be such an amazing baby and we are so lucky and blessed that you are ours. At 6 months:
*You have your doctor's appointment next week, but I'm going to estimate that we're nearing 18 pounds. Update: Stats can be found at this post.
*You still wear size 2 diapers.
*You're in mostly 6 month clothes. They're getting snug length wise. A lot of your sleepers seem just a bit too short, and the feet in them are too small. We've had people tell us you have big hands, so maybe your feet are big too.
*Right after you turned 5 months old, you started rolling like a champ. At this point, there is no laying you on your back. If we lay you down, you roll over to your tummy in about a second.
*You're a lot more interested in toys lately. You have a favorite toy...a hard plastic ring that looks like a caterpillar with cloth pages attached.
*You are still just so smiley. You smile about everything. You smile when you wake up in the morning. You smile when you see Mommy. You smile when Daddy comes home. You smile at Sutton all the time, even when he's being annoying.
*I see this blank stare (below) from you SO MANY TIMES throughout my day and I think it's just so cute. Mom (Grandma Nancy) and I were going through old photos this past weekend, and we found that you resemble me a lot, and I was also a pro at this blank stare.
*You and Sutton play a pretty adorable game of peekaboo. Sutton gets progressively louder and you just laugh and laugh.
*You're a bouncer. But you prefer the bouncy seat to the upright bouncer things (such as the Jumperoo, or the one that hangs in a doorway). We lay you in your bouncy seat, and you just start going to town kicking your legs to make yourself bounce. You've started doing that when we lay you in your swing too, but that's no good. :) Doesn't quite work the same way.
*Sometimes you "sing" yourself to sleep. Just humming a little with your eyes half-open or closed. It's so gentle and sweet.
*You've also started this thing where you grab our faces. You do it all the time, but more so when you're tired. You just like to reach up and grab our lips, our cheeks, whatever you can get a handful of. With Daddy, you pull on his beard a lot, but he doesn't mind. I think you know what we look like, you know what we sound like, you know what we smell like. So this is just your way of learning a bit more about us...learning what we feel like. I love it.
*You've started this really strange, primal man-cry. I don't even know how to explain it. I got a little video of it that I posted on Instagram but I need to get a better one to post here. You will just yell out and it's so loud and deep, from the back of your throat. I've never heard another baby make this noise. You do it sometimes when you're just babbling, but you do it a lot when you're mad (i.e., hungry or tired because you still usually only cry about those two things).
*You've started this thing where, when you get really excited or happy, you will smile really big and then try to tuck your chin as far into your chest as it will go. It's so weird. You also like to straighten your legs and arch your back up off of wherever you're laying at the time.
*I was holding you one day, and your Daddy paused to mention just how big you've gotten. You are so long. When your head us up by mine, your feet go down past my waist. And your thighs have really chunked up lately. They're so squishy and awesome.
*I'm grateful that you're getting bigger because we've been having issues. You still only nurse for such short periods of time...like 4-7 minutes every 3 hours. And it seemed everything was fine, but in the past few weeks, you've become...less regular...and then when you DO go, it's diarrhea out the wazoo. We haven't had normal poop in weeks. Figuring it was a problem on my end, I've taken several steps to increase/better my milk supply so hopefully that will help. It's just a waiting game now. I will probably do a separate post about my nursing woes here soon since the whole point of this blog is to remember this time in our lives, and it's been a big deal lately.
*I wanted to wait until you were really 6 months old to feed you solids since that's what we did with Sutton. But in efforts to try to regulate your bowels, we decided to try some fruit on August 2. You didn't really like it. Didn't hate it, just wouldn't really eat it.
*We've tried several foods since then, mostly fruits since we're trying to help your poop situation: prunes, cantaloupe, more banana, and a green bean/sweet corn medley. You won't eat any of it. You make crazy faces, shudder, and then it all comes back out. It's like you don't know how to swallow anything other than milk.
*One evening, Daddy made a thicker mixture of breastmilk and rice cereal to feed you with a spoon. He got you to eat some of it, but then after you went to bed that night, you threw up a pancake-sized puddle of spit up in your bed. Twice. I was scared you were going to choke during the night, so I moved you to our bed and Daddy had to sleep on the couch. After that second time, you were good to go. I don't know if it was a reaction to the rice cereal or the cantaloupe that you sucked on that evening.
*You are always grabbing your feet and playing with them. You love love love to suck on your toes. Also a trait inherited from me. I don't do it anymore (haha), but have memories of doing it as a kid, which must mean I did it until I was like 3 or 4. Which is kind of gross. So who knows.
*You are tired and ready for bed by 8:30-9 every night. I usually nurse you, or if you've very recently eaten, then I just rock you and sing or hum and pat your bum. Lately, you've been sleeping until around midnight, when I get up to feed you. Then you'll eat again between 4 and 5am. Then you get up around 7 or 8am. So not terrible at all, but all the Mommy-emails that I get keep telling me that you should be sleeping through the night and if you're not, we should make you. I don't feel like I need to push that yet since this is working for us, so I think we'll just continue with what we're doing for now.
*You nap in the morning...the time is always different depending on how early you got up, and what we are doing. I try to make it so you can nap in your bed as much as possible, but you do take some of your morning naps in the car. Afternoon naps have been an issue. By 1pm you are so sleepy, so I put you down and you sleep well for 30ish minutes. Then you will just scream out. But you're not *really* awake. I try just putting your pacifier in, but that will only help for a little while and then you'll do it again. So lately when we come to that point in your nap, I will bring you to our bed and that seems to usually help. Sometimes I have to nurse you to calm you. Sometimes you'll be awake for 20 minutes and then go back to sleep for a couple hours. I love you and will do whatever I need to, but the reason this is most frustrating is because this was the time I'd planned on using to work since your big bro naps during this time too. Working has not been happening lately. :) You are worth it, but how to tell my clients that... :)
*I've started putting you in your high chair during our meal times so that you can be up there with us. You really seem to like being a part of what's going on. I usually put a few toys or chew things on your tray and sometimes you play with them, but most of the time you just watch us.
*It won't be long before you are mobile. You've started the beginning stage of crawling...you will plant your face on the ground and push off with your legs. You don't move hardly at all before you get frustrated that your face is on the ground though.
*I think you're so excited to play with Sutton. You just watch him all the time with such fascination, and you are always amused by what he is doing. I want this baby stage to last because it's already going too fast but I am SO excited to see you two play together. I know that will bring more challenges, so I am happy with things as they are now.
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