6 Months

Jack,

Holy speeding bullet Batman! (K. I am a dork.) But seriously, the six months that you have been a part of our family have just flown by. Time has been moving fast ever since Maggie was born, but I feel like it accelerated on the day that you were born. I adored you from the moment I held you in my arms, and 6 months later I only love you more. You are such a happy, smiley baby and are seriously a joy to have in our family. I wish I could slow things down so that I could enjoy you for a bit longer.

Here are some of your quirks--the things that make you so uniquely you and just a few of the reasons that I love you. You are a good communicator. You tell me what you need using your voice and body language. Because of this, you seldom cry. When I walk back into the room after being gone even just a couple of seconds, your whole body reacts with excitement. You flap your arms kinda bird-like and wiggle your hips. Even though you don't cry very often, when you are not getting your way, you cry loud and hard and persistently. When I walk around the room, especially if your Daddy is holding you, your eyes follow me everywhere. You love getting your clothes off and your diaper changed. The closer you are to naked, the wigglier you get. You have a little dance that you do when I change your diaper; you wiggle your hips, flap your arms up and down, then grab your feet, followed by other little parts. I am always trying to keep your hands out of the way little stinker. You are a hair puller BIG TIME. I can't even wear my hair in a pony tail when I am holding you because you grab the hairs at the bottom of my neck and pull them out. If Maggie's hair is within your reach? Watch out! Luckily she is pretty patient with this, but I am sensing that her patience is starting to fail so we will see what happens.

You are very curious and want to see everything that is going on in your world. This makes feeding you a little difficult as you are often whipping your head around and craning your neck to observe what is going on in your world. When I bathe you, you kick your legs and splash! For awhile we called you Thumper because of the way you aggressively kick the ground with your heels. You LOVE Maggie. You love watching her, and you especially love it when she plays with you. I think your favorite activity is when she pushes you in your baby swing (often so aggressively that she slides the swing across the floor and bangs it into the opposite wall). Her favorite is when I help you jump on the bed with her. Both activities get lots of laughs. Really though, all Maggie has to do is get in your face and you talk and squeal and laugh. You have a fuzzy little head that is pretty much irresistible to rubbing and cheeks that are definitely irresistible to kissing.

You can roll very well from back to front and vice versa. You also pivot in circles and try to inch your way here and there. You like spending time on the floor playing, but when you decide you are done, you won't be happy until you are snuggly in my arms. You actually don't like being rocked to sleep. I sometimes try to rock you in the rocking chair or just in my arms, but you don't care much for it. You are too busy wiggling and squirming, trying to get a better look at your world. When I lay you in your crib, you usually go to sleep without a single complaint. But, if you decide you aren't ready, you cry and scream for sometimes a very long time, until I usually give up (which I am sure is at least part of the problem), but because you usually don't cry at all, it breaks my heart when you do. Yup, you have me wrapped around your finger. Plus, you make the most adorable sad face. I have been in love with it since day 1.

We still swaddle you for sleep, and you are just starting to regularly break out when you wake up. You still wake up a couple times at night, but I have had a hard time working with on this with you because I am afraid your cries will wake up Maggie and bring knocks on our door in the middle of the night (happened just once so far). You take 2-3 naps a day. If we are out doing something interesting, you will sometimes skip right through your morning nap. Other days, you refuse to take an evening snooze, even when I know you are super tired.

You can almost sit up, but not quite. I think you would be able to sit up if you weren't so busy trying to reach for everything that you see. For a few days you did a head bob that was totally freaking me out, but luckily it seems to have passed. I think you were just exploring a new way of moving your body. You eat solid foods one time before bed. Surprisingly, you had the hardest time with sweet potatoes so far. They made you gag with the first few spoonfuls, but your best "this is gross face" showed up when I fed you peas for the first time. I don't have your growth stats on me right now, but you were around 50% for weight and height. Just perfect.

And I think that about sums it up. As far as I am concerned, you are pretty much perfect. I am so grateful that I get to be your mama.

Here is a little video that I think at least your Grandmas might enjoy, of you making your favorite noise! It is kinda long, but it made made your daddy laugh, so here is the uncut version.

Yep, you are a cutie. xoxo