wishing you...

a holiday season full of joy, cheer, peace, and wonder!  And to help you celebrate, enjoy the festive sounds of...

six months.

This post is a bit on the late side considering he's turning seven months in a few days.  This batch of photos 

was a tough one to widdle down to just a handful cause there were so many great expressions on his face.  So I chose the best ones that capture a bit of his personality and also show where this growing baby is at, halfway to a year...can you believe it!

It seems like there's so much that happens at six months.  Most of the time, I can't tell what is happening and find myself asking "is he teething or just cranky sleepy?" or "is he not sleeping through the night cause he's hungry or just used to waking up or experiencing separation anxiety?"  But as you can see, he's sitting up and from the last picture, thinks he can stand (don't you just want to take a bite out of those turkey legs).  He's rolling front to back, and back to front so quickly now, which means we officially can't leave him alone on any high surfaces (i.e. a bed even if it's a big one and you've placed him smack in the middle of it cause he will roll off of it faster than you think...I know I'm not the only parent that has happened to).

We've introduced solids and it's been fun to watch him discover new tastes and textures in his mouth.  He seems to enjoy eating and feeding himself.  He thinks he knows how to maneuver a spoon and can get pretty angry if you don't let him put it in his mouth himself...which is hard for me to watch sometimes cause I gag when it looks like he's jamming it too far back into his mouth.

We've also been working on getting him onto a better schedule so that he sleeps more, especially at night.  We had been able to handle his sleeping patterns which were extending to four to five hour intervals as he was getting older.  But last month he seemed to all of a sudden start to regress and his intervals shortened to two hours, even one.  Brutal.  And this lasted for weeks.  Was it teething?  Separation anxiety?  Hunger?  A six months thing?  Who knows?  I just knew something had to change.  So we decided to take more control when the new year rolled around and have been working on a better schedule with sleep training.  Since we've been working with a proper nap/bedtime schedule, it seems like he's sleeping better and longer at night.  At one point, he slept from 7-10pm straight which I did not expect.  I was in such disbelief that I had to check his breathing cause I wondered if he was even still alive.  And then the first night he actually slept through till 6am was amazing cause for the first time in a long time I woke up not exhausted.  But it's still a work in progress as sleeping through the night seems to be more of a rarity than the norm at this point.  I realize that this may take some time and every baby is different so I shouldn't compare.  But I do feel like he's going to work it out and get it, maybe not soon, but someday.

I can't get over how fast he's growing.  Let me remind you that he used to look like this, expressionless and a little out of it, six months ago.  And now he is full of expressions, emotions, sounds, and chub.