Willis and We: Happy 6 Months, Bman!

Bman celebrated his 1/2 birthday with an early dismissal from school and the sweet taste of solid foods. Of course there were lots of hugs, kisses and snuggles throughout the day too. Here a ~~not so~~ brief update on how he is developing.

Stats: No official stats until Tuesday at his well visit. I am going to go out on a limb and say he is grown a lot and weighs more than the last stat update :) I re post once I have those numbers.

Eating: Tonight Brody had his first go at solid food and he just played with it. I will reserve the details on this for a blog post of it's own but I will share that we are skipping purees and cereal and moving right to 'real' table food. Brody joined us for dinner and pushed some food around on his tray.

Here's a sneak peek

Yup, that's an orange pepper. He had chicken on his tray too but tossed it over for the dogs :)

As far as the liquid diet goes, he is still drinking three 5oz. bottle of breast milk at school and nursing in the morning and evening. He does great with both bottling and nursing and my supply has finally regulated to where I am producing just what he needs. It took some adjusting but I think we finally have it all figured out!

Sleep: He is still a great sleeper but we have seen some changes in this department. He is waking once per night and the time varies. Sometimes it is at midnight and sometimes around 4. He wants to nurse and then he goes back to sleep until 6:30. A friend suggested the book The Wonder Weeks and in the book they discuss that babies go through age specific 'mental leaps' which cause interruptions in their routines (sleep, eating, etc.) and according to that he is at the tail end of a 'leap.' Hopefully he will get back to sleeping his 10-12 hours straight for a few weeks before he goes backwards again and gears up for another 'leap.' I refuse to complain about this because I know it's just a phase and it's just more snuggle time with my babe.

During the day he still takes 3-4 naps. These times vary and there is really no set schedule for them. When he is home I typically lay him down about 2 hours after he ate and he will sleep for about an hour. He works off three hour cycles and it begins with his feeding then play and then sleep. I have started to transition him to his crib (on the weekends) for naps so maybe he will work toward two longer naps throughout the day. I'm in no rush to make drastic changes; he seems happy so we'll just go with it.

Play: We have seen a lot of growth in this area over the past month. Brody LOVES peek-a-boo. He has developed the object permanence and knows that even though he cannot see me I am still there. He is learning about the relationships between objects; that things have a cause and reaction and loves when he pushes the buttons on his toys to hear the music or sounds they make. He has the sweetest giggle.

Motor Development: Brody can roll front-to-back and back-to-front and do them continuously. His rolling is becoming efficient and he is able to do it fluidly. He can sit unassisted but is still a little unsteady and if he gets excited he'll throw his arms up and fall back or to the side. The boppy pillow helps him tremendously! When he is on his belly he'll push up far on his hands but has not figured out how to get up on his knees. This we are OK with as I am not ready for a mobile baby!