Six Months Old Today

My little boy is 6 months old today. So exciting to see how he is growing and developing.

He had his doctor's appointment today and got quite a few shots (vaccines as well as the flu shot). He cried for a little while, but settled down fairly quickly and fell asleep in the car on the way home. When we got home, he was all smiles, nursed, and eventually fell back asleep (he's sleeping now as I'm typing this). I'm prepared for an afternoon/evening of extreme fussiness, but I'm hoping the smiles mean that he'll be fine today.

He checked out just fine and is continuing to grow nicely. His weight for his height did go down a little in the percentage, but since his daddy was long and skinny, it's likely Luke will be the same way and the doctor wasn't concerned. So here's his progress since his 4-month appointment:

Height at 4 months: 24"

Height at 6 months: 26"

Weight at 4 months: 13 lb 4.9 oz

Weight at 6 months: 15 lb 9.9 oz

The doctor did ask about feeding solids and said he should be eating 3 meals a day. I told her that just this week we've tried sweet potato and banana but it appears that he still has the tongue thrust reflex as he keep just pushing the food back out, so I'll keep trying but I'm not going to force food on him. She recommended rice cereal because it is iron fortified. I just smiled and nodded. I'd prefer that Luke eat real foods and get his iron from iron-rich foods rather than rice cereal (although I will try oatmeal at some point). I'm also not going to give him three meals a day for a while. We're just going to do once a day until he actually starts eating instead of thrusting the food out, then move to twice a day and then finally three times a day. I want to introduce food more gradually (and since he's still breastfeeding, he's getting the nutrition he needs from that). [Note: I've been doing lots of research on feeding solids, so I'm not just ignoring what the doctor said because I feel like it.]

Here are some pictures I took of him this morning:

Here are his previous monthly pictures, so you can really see how much he's grown!

August 23 - birth

September 23 - 1 month

October 23 - 2 months

November 23 - 3 months

December 23 - 4 months

January 23 - 5 months

The sad part of growing (besides the fact that he's not going to be a baby too much longer!) is growing out of clothing. There were some outfits that he had in 3-6 months size that I just loved. And I think that I kept telling myself that they were still fitting just fine long after he really should have moved up in size because I didn't want to have to have him stop wearing those outfits. But he's truly up to the next size (which resulted in a quick shopping trip to get him stuff that fit!), so I have to say goodbye to the following outfits. At least I have pictures and memories.

Superman!

I'm Batman!

Love the little monster playing a guitar

Dinosaurs!

He looks so grown up in this outfit!

Dinosaur playing a guitar!

I'm not super fond of most of the clothing he has in the 6-9 month size, but in some ways that's probably good so that I won't get sad again when he outgrows it as I'm sure he'll do and probably long before he reaches 9 months.

The other exciting part of him getting older is all the stuff he's doing now and how much more interested in various toys he has become. When we were at our moms' group this week, I stood him up at the activity table that the hosting mom had and he seemed to really enjoy it, so I stopped by Toys R Us and picked up one (I thought that I had a 20% off coupon, which is why I bought one new instead of used, but it turns out that the 20% off coupon for Toys R Us is not actually good on toys *sigh*). I do have to be right with him when he's using it (although he is able to hold himself up by holding onto the table), and he seems to like it so far. But in looking for the table, I went out of the baby section of the store and into the larger section. And my gods, there are so many awesome toys. I don't want him to have a ton of toys, but it's going to be hard not to do that as some of the stuff just looks so neat. I'm looking forward to seeing him play and seeing how his play time develops over the next 6 months.

As for sleep, he's still waking up pretty often at night (see previous post about sleeping) and needs me to nurse him and rock him to get him back to sleep. But this past week, since he learned to roll from back to tummy, he's been rolling over at night and he seems to prefer to sleep on his stomach. So there are times that he'll fuss a little, roll over onto his tummy, and then fall back asleep. So the past two nights we've gone from 1.5-2 hour intervals to closer to 3 hours, which is much much better. And I'm sure that he'll start sleeping a little longer than that in the next few months (at least I hope so!), so it looks like tummy sleeping seems to be a really big milestone for him.

Speaking of sleeping, he's probably going to wake up from his nap soon so I'd better end this post for now.