Here you are sitting on Daddy. Daddy has some play time with you every night and you laugh almost the whole time. You're one of the happiest kids we know!
So Mommy is running late AGAIN this month with writing your letter… you’re actually almost 6 and a HALF months old. At least this month, Mommy was smart enough to take some notes during the month so we should hopefully be able to put together a letter that doesn’t mix in anything that actually happened in your seventh month! You have grown by leaps and bounds in your sixth month – you haven’t gained as much in size as you have in previous months, but you are doing and learning so many new things, that it’s getting hard to remember what you were like as a new baby!
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Early on in your sixth month, you started to always be hungry. I mean you would nurse till Mommy was empty on both sides and then want to nurse again an hour later. You just couldn’t be filled up! You even started getting up in the night STARVING, which you hadn’t done in ages! So right at the end of month 5, Mommy and Daddy decided we’d better start feeding you solid food regularly. You had already tasted mashed potatoes when we went to Canmore and you LOVED them, so we figured you’d like other solid foods too! Mommy makes all your food by blending what Daddy and I eat and adding breastmilk… for your first week, you had pork chops and carrots. By about the middle of your sixth month, we had you eating a solid supper every day and you were sleeping MUCH better at night, back up to 8 hours at a time! You also go down for two naps a day – no fuss in the morning, but in the last week of this month we noticed you were starting to fuss a lot when we put you down in the afternoon. We aren’t sure why yet, Mommy tried moving you to one nap per day and that didn’t work. But we’ll figure it out!
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Having some delicious beets for supper. You've liked EVERYTHING we've offered you so far, except bananas. You're a better eater than Mommy and Daddy!
So far, you’ve really taken to eating solid foods… now that you know you can eat things, EVERYTHING you touch goes straight into your mouth. Mommy and Daddy really have to watch what you get your hands on since we don’t want you to choke or hurt yourself, but if something is safe for you to have, we let you chew away on it! Your grabbing gets really bad when you see Mommy or Daddy eating or drinking something. If your parents are putting it into their mouths, then you HAVE TO HAVE IT, STAT… and sometimes you even get mad if we don’t give it to you! You even get mad during your regular meals when we don’t have the next spoonful of food ready fast enough. Sometimes we share our food with you, but some things (beer, Coke, candy) just aren’t appropriate for a little baby!
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About halfway through this month, Mommy noticed you were really pigging out in the morning and you didn’t really seem satisfied throughout the day until you’d had supper. So we added in a second daily meal for you – rice cereal in the morning. At first Mommy just made it with breastmilk, but you didn’t like the taste very much – so we started adding some pureed fruit in for flavor. Now breakfast is your favorite meal of the day – you pork it right down, and you’ll even get mad if you open your mouth and the next spoonful isn’t ready! Daddy fed you a few times this month, and he was the first one to discover that you had learned a new trick – after only a few weeks of eating solids, you learned to “pffft” and spit things back at the person feeding you! We say “no” and correct you when you do it, but really it’s HILARIOUS and we’re trying not to laugh and encourage you – just like when you stick your thumb in your mouth during meals. It’s hard for Mommy and Daddy to say “no” and stop you from doing things that are still cute or funny right now. But it’s for your own good – and ours!
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It's getting harder and harder to get you to sleep. You sleep just like Mommy - very lightly! This is the day you were at the store in Sylvan Lake with Mommy, and we made you a cardboard house to keep the light out of your eyes so you would sleep!
On the last night of month 5, you slept in your crib for the first time. That was a hard night for Mommy and Daddy – every time Mommy put you in the crib, you cried and cried. Mommy would let you cry for a few minutes, then take you out and nurse you a little more and try again. Eventually you went to sleep and slept through the night. I don’t think it was the crib though – it was a couple days after that, you started eating solid food for supper, and that’s when you started sleeping well again. So your transition to the crib would have been easier if Mommy had known you were just hungry! By a few days into month 6, you were sleeping in the crib every night with no issues… Mommy nurses you, you’re still awake when you get put down, and you go right to sleep every time with (at most) only a few minutes of fussing. I hope it always stays this easy, but Mommy and Daddy aren’t going to assume anything! So far though, I think you sleeping in your crib has been harder on Daddy than it has on you.
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It seemed like you outgrew a lot of things this month… Mommy can’t even remember what you were like when you were smaller, without looking back at pictures. We put away your bathtub and baby towels this month because they are way too small for you. You were displacing water right out of your tub and Mommy was having to use two towels to dry you! So now you have your baths in the kitchen sink. You’re not really a fan of this, I think because you want to sit up but the bottom of the sink is too slippery! Mommy has to hold you up a bit so you don’t fall back and bonk your head, and you don’t like to be held in one position. We also use big-person towels for your bath now, so Mommy can bundle you right up just like we used to do with the baby towels. You like the warm scratchy towels a lot more than you like your new “bathtub” though!
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Just one more thing we put away this month... this is one of the last times you used the bassinet in the top of your playpen. This is you chilling out in the back room at Sylvan Lake Business Solutions.
There are a few other things that got put away this month. You haven’t used the wedge pillows in awhile because you can roll over now – so when we try to prop you up on a wedge, you just roll off and get mad because you’re on your face! We also put your cradle away because you touch both ends of it when we put you in, and you almost fill it out to both sides! You like to move around a lot when you sleep, so we know you would HATE to be in the cradle now. Daddy misses having you in our bedroom, but your crib just won’t fit in there with all our other furniture! The last thing we put away this month is your bouncy chair. You are still under the “maximum” weight for it, but Mommy put you in it one day and didn’t get one clip done up all the way… and you leaned forward and flipped the whole chair over! You were fine of course, but just a week earlier you wouldn’t have been able to flip the chair even if BOTH clips were undone, so Mommy didn’t feel comfortable putting you in there after that. You didn’t like it that much anyway, once the little hanging toys started to bore you!
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You’re moving a lot this month – on your way to becoming mobile. Mommy and Daddy are happy to see every new development and we encourage and praise you… but we’re a little bit sad to see you growing up so fast. We know there will be a day when you’ll be running around without needing our help, and that’ll just be that much closer to the day when you won’t need us for anything anymore! So far, you just roll or inch… but it’s still pretty impressive when we set you on your back on a blanket and we turn away for a minute, only to turn back and find you’ve rolled or inched a couple of feet from where we put you down!
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You’re really close to sitting up too… you are already trying all the time to sit up on your own. You strain from the lying on your back position to pull yourself up and you just can’t quite make it. We think you have the muscles you need for it, but you just don’t know how to use all of them in the right combinations yet! If we sit you up, you can sit there with no help, but you are very wobbly – you can’t reach for anything without falling over, and you fall over randomly with no warning too. One day this month you were sitting up and suddenly you just pushed with your legs and dove headfirst into the floor! Mommy freaked out because there was a big loud THUD, but as soon as you hit, you rolled onto your side, looked at Mommy and started laughing! Just like Daddy said in your first month you are a TOUGH little boy.
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Wiggling around on the floor. You wiggle all the time now... you never stop moving. You don't move very far yet, but Mommy and Daddy know that won't last much longer!
I think the BIGGEST change you went through this month was TEETH! Mommy and Daddy have thought for weeks that you must be teething because of the sheer volume of drool that comes out of your face. And this month, we finally found the first tooth! On September 29 Mommy felt a little sharp spot on your gum, the bottom left front tooth. It wasn’t through the skin yet, but it was definitely a tooth! And the very next day, we felt your bottom RIGHT tooth coming in… two teeth at once! No wonder you had been drooling so much. By the end of the sixth month, both teeth were through the skin although they’re still not grown in all the way. It won’t be long until you’re chewing up your own food! You are getting to be such a big boy – so fast – and Mommy and Daddy are just as proud of you as we could possibly be. We love you so very much. ♥
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Your measurements at the end of this month:
- Height: 28 inches
- Weight: 18 lb. 12 oz.
