6 month doctor visit and update (Jan 19, 2012)

Today you turn 6 months old! It just completely blows me away to think that in the timeline of your life, you are equal distance between being born, and turning 1 year old. I don't like it! Stop growing so fast!

You had your 6 month doctor visit today. As ever, you are TINY. Your stats:

13 lbs 14 oz (1.5 percentile)
24 inches (0 percentile)

You got more vaccines, which you handled like a champ. The doctor prescribed a new vitamin with flouride in it for your impending teeth. He also prescribed a hydrocortisone because you have had a rough patch of skin on your belly for months. He also has us using a thicker lotion since you have such dry skin, even though we lotion you at least twice a day. He said you can start solids at any time now, although we've decided to hold off for now.

Some things about you at 6 months:

• You have developed this cheesy grin which has merited you the name "Cheeseball" by Daddy. You grin so hard that it makes your eyes crinkle.
• You are fascinated by my cell phone. I don't let you play with it routinely, but it makes for a good quick distraction when needed.
• You have suddenly become camera-shy. Very inconvenient. You'll be a loud riot, but as soon as anyone whips out the camera to photograph it you immediately go silent and just stare at the camera straight-faced.
• You are great at reaching out and grabbing things to play with and chew on. Now that you can sit up I can put you on the floor with some toys in your lap and you'll reach down and grab them to play with. You quickly knock things out of reach though so it doesn't take long before I hear you fuss and find that it's because you've knocked all your toys just out of reach, with a little circle of toys a foot away from you.
• You like to sing sometimes, both alone (like when we're in the car) and with others (if someone else is singing sometimes you like to join in)
• For the last several weeks you've started giving kisses to people! If someone's holding and kissing you, you grab their face and plant your open mouth on it somewhere and start sucking/chomping. Very slobbery and sometimes painful, but absolutely adorable.
• You can actually play on your tummy happily for a couple minutes at a time before you decide you're tired of it. You can't get up on your hands on knees yet though.
• You LOVE hot milk. A while back I accidentally let your milk bag run under the hot water for too long and ended up with warm milk instead of room temperature milk. It was still cool enough to drink, so I gave it to you anyway, and you had this look of pure bliss on your face while you drank. I don't think you came up for air once. So now if I need to give you a little bottle before bed I make it nice and warm as a treat for you, but any other time of the day I don't let it get too warm so that you don't get used to it.
• Anytime we take you somewhere we get comments on what a cute baby you are. So true.
• You can anticipate play now instead of being surprised by it. So if we lean over you slowly you'll start breathing fast and your eyes will open wide and you'll get really tense and excited while you wait to see what we do. Also, if we hand you a toy you want sometimes you'll give a little chortle of excitement.
• You sleep through the night quite well, and have for the last few weeks! We usually put you to bed sometime around 8:30 and you now regularly sleep through until at least 6:30 the next morning. Sometimes even a little longer, if I'm lucky. Of course we still occasionally have to come in and give you your binky if you cry during the night, but it's still amazing! I really did not expect you to start sleeping through the night for a couple more months so I am very happy about this! I still have to set my alarm and wake up once in the middle of the night to pump, but at least the rest of the household gets a good night's sleep!
• You now realize that things happen on tv and computer screens. You like to watch Nana and Papa when we video chat, and you like to watch little clips of movies and songs on the computer.
• You sit up great and can do it for long periods of time.
• Still no rolling over yet.
• Your babbling and chatter has gone to the next level. You have figured out how to make some consonant sounds with your mouth, mostly sounds like buh da la mah na wa, or your favorite combination - "bla". We are often treated to an ongoing chatter as you yell out different sounds.
• You like being read to although you now grab for the book so it makes turning pages hard
• You have a sense of object permanence now. If something falls or moves, you'll turn your head toward where you think it has gone. We've been warned that this skill will soon cause your Stranger Danger phase where you cry whenever we leave your sight. Not yet though.
• You are just a charming little child. A pure joy. You are old enough now that I can take you places when you're awake and not worry too much about you causing a fuss. Just last night we took you to dinner with us and you were happy as can be. While you certainly require a lot of time, attention, and energy since you want constant play, I have definitely felt like you've been an easy baby for the last couple months. I have watched our neighbor's 2 month old a couple times now and it's crazy how big of a difference there is between how hard it is to take care of you two with you only being a few months older. I feel like we are on a good, predictable schedule and it really does make things so much easier.

"Big Boy Stroller" - 1st time

I put you in the umbrella stroller for the first time on January 10th, the same day you sat up. You loved it! You had only ever been in a stroller that was rear-facing before. It must have been something about being able to see where we were going, or the wind against your face or something, but you giggled the whole short walk down to the mailbox. It was nice weather out so I took you for a little walk around the neighborhood and you fell asleep!

We got the stroller the summer we moved in at a neighbor's yard sale and have just been holding onto it these few years. It worked well, although you're definitely still very small for it - I had to tie the belt in a knot because you are so tiny still that the buckled straps weren't doing a thing to hold you in!

You Sit Up!!!

You sat up for the first time on January 10, 2012, a week and a half before your 6-month birthday. We were on a playdate with Jaxon and Lacee and went to someone's house for a baby sign language introduction. I had you propped up on the floor in front of me and was supporting you with my hand on your back, and all of a sudden you leaned forward a little to look at something, and when you straightened up you didn't lean back all the way to lean against my hand again. At first I thought it was just a fluke so I kept my hand there thinking you'd fall over in a second, but after several seconds passed I slowly pulled my hands away and said, "Lacee! Look! He's never done this before!" You were very wobbly, for sure, but definitely sitting up all by yourself! I couldn't believe it - you had never even shown any interest in sitting up before, and here you were acting like it was no big deal. I was so excited that I immediately took the below picture with my cell phone and sent it to Daddy and all our immediate family.

Nearly everyone responded over the next couple hours with their exclamations and comments. You only managed to sit up for probably less than a minute before you got tired and fell over, but then later that same day I propped you up on the floor and you sat up for about a minute again.

Unfortunately, Daddy was at a work conference and didn't get home until after you went to bed, so he didn't get to see you until the next day. In this picture below you are showing off your new sitting skills for Daddy and both of you were very proud!

It only took a few more days of practice before you were regularly sitting up like a champ! Now you can sit for over 5 minutes at a time before you get tired and start slumping and grunting, at which point we lay you down to rest. You've had plenty of falls (including a particularly nasty one in sacrament meeting on the hard carpet) but we are trying to show you that tipping over is no big deal so we cheer or give you toys when you fall over. For the most part you're okay with it although you still look at us every time to decide if you should cry or not.

I am so glad that I was there for this big milestone! I knew that it wasn't possible to watch you every second of every day and that inevitably you would do some things for the first time when I wasn't there to see it (like giving people kisses, that one you started at Grandma's house). . .but I am so glad that I got to see this one! I'm so proud of how well you are developing!

Baby Butt-prints

(Here's Daddy, hoping against hope that he doesn't get peed on)

I decided to make some creative prints. Thanks for being so cooperative!

Christmas Eve tradition

Just thought I should include a family pic from your first Christmas Eve party at Lata and Jeevan's house! It's a yearly tradition, although last year we couldn't go because I was newly pregnant and very sick. . .so Mommy and Daddy made a visit to instacare instead. We hadn't told anyone yet that you were coming to our family, but after missing the party we had to tell everyone the next day at Christmas, since everyone was very suspicious anyway! Everyone remembered last year and remarked on how happy it is that you are here this year!

1st Christmas

What a well-loved boy you are! This year the King side even decided to forego presents for each other and just give presents to you! This will probably be the only Christmas we allow such spoiling, since you're too little to let it go to your head :)

You got:

Clothes from Jeevan. Diaper pail from Ayisha. Jumper from Grandma and Grandpa King. High chair, Thor book, and Daddy's old 1st Christmas stocking from Nana and Papa. Berenstein Bears, Finding Nemo, spoons, and teether from Aunt Amanda. Christmas in the Manger book from Aunt Rachel Harris (your favorite book, by the way, you love it and so we read it every night)

. . .and much playtime and kisses from everyone.

First time swimming!

Oh my goodness, look how chunky you are in the above picture. I love it.

Today I took you to the pool for the first time! With the way those little legs of your kick, we always joke that you're a little swimmer - so I figured it was time to find out! Plus, you had this adorable striped pool romper in 0-3 month size that I never got to use because you were still in preemie/newborn size in the summer. So it was also a good way to sneak in wearing it once while it still fit! The pool idea occurred to me a couple days ago out of nowhere. Something about going swimming in the middle of winter I guess. So I scouted around until I found a rec center with daytime pool hours, then searched until I found a store with Little Swimmers diapers in stock, and we were good to go!

We went with your buddy Jaxon and his mommy. (Thanks to Lacee for taking all the pics, by the way!)

You were in the water for about 45 minutes total. At first you really did not know what to make of it. You just kept quickly looking all around the room trying to take everything in and figure out what was going on. I held you all sorts of ways and played all kinds of little games with you to see if I could get any kind of reaction. You didn't smile or laugh, but you also didn't fuss or cry, so I guess you thought it was acceptable. Once I took you out of the water, you finally started to show some reaction! I was holding you against me in a towel to warm up, and you kept twisting to be able to look at the pool. So finally I decided maybe you wanted to get back in, so we went back for another 15 minutes. When we got back in you started to smile a little bit and even giggle and talk some! So I guess you decided you liked it! I held you around your ribs and you would flop your bottom half around without moving your head or arms. It was so funny!

You in your "rubber pants" we bought at the rec center to go over your Little Swimmers diaper (which was Finding Nemo themed, in case you're curious)

After a while we decided you boys were tired so we went back to the locker room where I held you under a warm shower to rinse off, which you LOVED. You kept opening your mouth to catch the shower drops and didn't mind getting misted in the face. Then I got you changed into warm clothes and we headed home. Both you and Jaxon fell asleep within about 2 minutes and slept for about an hour and a half each. Just totally zonked from the swim!

We will definitely go back soon - and next time we're taking Daddy to see how much fun you have there!

(afternote: Mommy got very sick a couple days later with Cryptospiridium from our pool adventure. Thank goodness you were fine!)