100th Post!

In honor of my 100th post, I thought I'd put up a couple cute videos. The first one is full of bubbles, and the second one is full of giggles. Have fun! :)

Update with Pictures

Just a little update on my cute little man. I might be speaking too early, but I think Josh and I have conquered bedtime. For a whole week this kid has been going to sleep without so much as a whimper. Now I'm sure you are all wondering what our secret to successful parenting is. Well, we don't have one. I really don't know what changed. We've been putting him to bed the same way, and he'd cry for an hour before finally settling down. I guess he just decided one day to not cry and go to sleep. I don't think he goes to sleep right away. He moves around a lot, and it may take him 20 minutes I'm guessing. I'm not really sure, cause I don't want to keep checking on him and disturb him. I think the Lord has something to do with Matthew going to bed nicely. I really can't take any credit, cause I don't know what triggered this behavior. I think I will just be grateful for it and smile. Now if he can only do that for nap time, I would be ecstatic. For instance, yesterday he didn't take one nap. He just cried and cried. I feel so bad that he spent a lot of the day crying, but I don't know what else to do. Trust me, he's tired, so I know he needs to sleep. He's just a determined young fellow. Which is a good trait in other settings. But today, I put him down for a nap, and in 10 minutes he was asleep. He only slept for 30 minutes, but hey, he did it all by himself. Does this gray cloud have a silver lining? Stay tuned!

Ok, I admit, these are a little staged. I had to make his hand touch his foot, but he grabbed on and held on all by himself.




In other Matthew news, his tooth is really starting to shoot up. I noticed he's got a red spot behind it, and the other day he was chewing on his zipper sweater thing, and we found some blood on his clothes. Now at first I thought he must have knicked himself on the zipper, but now I'm thinking that maybe his gum was just bleeding a little bit by itself. It makes sense, cause he's got this new tooth that his gums have to make room for, so they would be a little sore and ready to bleed perhaps. It doesn't seem to bother him either, so I'm happy for him. The tooth next to this one is visible, but it hasn't actually surfaced yet. I can't wait to have pictures of him with his new teeth. There's nothing like a baby's gummy smile with two little white friends peeking through :)

I love his goofy-looking smile here.

He likes to practice his new sound. He was saying "da-da-da-da" in Wal-Mart really loud yesterday. And he likes to spit too. Especially when I'm trying to feed him. And while we're on that subject, I haven't seen much improvement with him liking baby food. He doesn't hate it, but he's also not begging for more. It's almost like he tolerates it for my sake. He's gotta learn to swallow, which I know only comes with practice. If he gets confident with that, he may enjoy eating better. For now I just put it in, and it sits on his tongue before it comes back out, watered down with drool. He grabs the spoon when it comes close enough, like he's trying to feed himself, and he'll chew on it and swing it around.

This is the face he makes when Daddy holds him. Just kidding! This was a particularly grumpy day. I know it's blurry, but I figure I get all these pictures when he's smiling, and I need to capture the cranky side of him too. I don't want to look back and think my kid was perfect :)

He seems to laugh pretty easy these days. People at church might not believe me, since whenever we're there he seems so tired and subdued. But I promise he's got energy! He loves to grab at people's faces now. The other day he grabbed my cheeks, so I made a game out of it. I said "These are Mommy's cheeks" and then I'd tickle his cheeks and say "These are Matthew's cheeks." We continued that with our noses and lips and chins, and he kept giggling every time I touched his face. It was a lot of fun.

This is how we found him asleep one night. See what I mean about him moving around a lot? I certainly didn't lay him in the crib that way!

Oh yeah! The other day he reached for me for the first time! Josh was holding him, and he said "Do you want to go to Mommy?" I held out my hands, and he reached out both arms for me. And he was doing it over Josh's shoulder, which made it a little more challenging, but he did it! He's getting much stronger these days. When we hold him, his back is straighter, and he supports himself by pressing his hand on us so he can look around. We're still trying to get him to sit up on his own. He's definitely not always in the mood for it, and he'll let us know, but sometimes he likes it. A friend of mine let me borrow the Bumbo they had for their little girl, and I tried Matthew in it. It was a snug fit, but he didn't mind it for the first couple minutes. But once he dropped his toy and couldn't get to it, then he'd had enough. I think we'll keep using it though, cause I want him to realize that he can play with his toys while sitting up.


Whatchu lookin' at?

Hey, where'd that toy go? It was here a second ago!

And last but not least, some of the cutest pictures ever, in my objective, unbiased opinion ;)

Da-da-da

Six Month Pictures

We took Matthew to Portrait Innovations this morning, and the results were great. We stayed in our budget, but I'm tellin' ya, it was hard to do. They took 42 pictures, and he was just so darn adorable that it was hard to narrow it down. Our photographer was really good with him, and he smiled for her like a champ. I've put up the ones that didn't make the cut. Those of you that'll be getting pictures will see the better ones soon. Enjoy our handsome little man!

Yay for pumpkins and leaves!

Playing in the leaves

These really are pants on him, but he kept pulling them up.

I love how his hands are just so in this shot.

He's becoming such a playful little boy.

Mommy, are we almost done?

Look at those little lips! I just wanna kiss 'em!

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.