6 Months Old

The halfway mark already! Where has the time gone? It's hard to believe I'm the mother of a six-month old. Six more months and we will be celebrating his first birthday. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful baby. He really is a pleasure to parent. Most of the time he is content and laid back. He likes to roll over to reach his toys so he can play with them. And not everything goes immediately into his mouth anymore. I'll catch him examing the toy and trying to make it "work" (if it's one that spins or has something noisy attached to it). He loves when Josh and I interact with him. He gets all excited and opens his mouth real big. And he absolutely loves our hands. He'll watch us wave to him and try to mimic us. Which, for the record, he did move his fingers slowly up and down as he concentrated, so I'm considering that as his first wave. And if we clap our hands he loves it as well. He loves when Josh wrestles with him or kisses on him. He'll scream with delight and try to grab his face. Oh, and he's pretty ticklish too :)

The doctor wants us to continue to work with him on sitting up. Now that he can roll over, he doesn't show interest in wanting to sit up anymore, and he's pretty stubborn. We try to pull up on his arms, and he straightens out his whole body so he won't bend. Little booger. But we force him to sit up anyway, cause he's gotta learn to do it on his own someday. I'm still working on his falling-asleep-on-his-own campaign. He shows real promise. For two nights in a row he fell asleep all by himself and didn't even cry. But the days before that he would cry for an hour regardless of our intervening. Last night I put him down and we thought he was asleep cause we never heard one noise from him. We go in there to check on him, and he's awake, just laying there. We couldn't believe it! He tricked us into thinking he was asleep for the last 45 minutes!!

He's really developing a personality. If he doesn't like something, he lets us know with a screech or a funny face. Or he'll even do this fake fussing to show his displeasure. But on the up side, his budding personality comes through when he's really enjoying something and excited. He even recognizes when something is funny and he'll laugh on occasion. He still sucks on his fingers, but lately he's been getting just his thumb in there. He doesn't really suck on it, it's more like chewing on it. Oh, and the doctor thinks one his teeth has broken the surface. I was feeling it the other day and it doesn't feel soft like gums. It's hard to get a good look at it though, cause whenever we open his mouth to look, he sticks his tongue out to lick our fingers.

He's getting stronger each day. When we carry him around, he pushes one arm against us to straighten himself out, so he's not as slumpy in our arms as he used to be. He still loves bathtime, and he's getting more used to his highchair. I was feeding him yesterday, and he grabbed the spoon from me and was banging it on the tray. It was really cute, even though he made a mess :)

Oh, here are his stats from his doctor's appt. 28.5 inches long and he weighs 22 lbs. and 4 oz. He's in the 97th percentile for both, which I wasn't surprised to hear. Oh, another thing that's changing about him is that his hair is getting fuller and darker. I think he's gonna have black hair just like both his grandpas.