Theo turned six months on Christmas Day! He had his six month check up on December 27 and came in at 18 lbs, 3 oz (!) and 27 1/4 in. Both measurements put him in the 75th percentile.
Theo is somehow still fitting into 6 month clothing, but most pants are getting too tight around his baby gut and the shirts are getting stretched lengthwise. 6-9 month fits perfectly with not much room to grow. The 9-12 month clothes are definitely in rotation.
Development:
--Theo finally decided that rolling over was awesome and started rolling back and forth like crazy in early December.
--We finally started seeing little white lines on baby boy's bottom gums in mid-December and were watching his mouth like crazy! Spoiler alert: they just missed this post :)
--Theo has always been a babbler, but it seems like it has exploded this month! Most sounds are still soft vowel sounds and we're always making m, d an b noises to him. He probably things we're crazy people!
--Mr. Man is still tripod sitting and needs help, but he's getting much better and more solid. He definitely prefers to be laying on the floor and will only tolerate sitting down for very short periods of time.
Overall, we're so much more laid back with Theo's developmental milestones than we were with Noelle. It's definitely more of the second child syndrome! Of course we're watching for delays and that type of thing, but we're not forcing anything and are happy to let our little guy pick things up at his own pace. No micro managing or "my baby can already do [this]!" around here :)
Firsts:
--The first, first was Theo's first Thanksgiving! We spent Thanksgiving Day with Bryan's family in Rockford and came back home Friday evening. Theo has already made this trip once or twice and has done very well in the car, usually sleeping most of the time. We are so lucky to have our extended families close by. Even at an hour and fifteen minutes, going to Rockford is a pretty easy trip, even with two young kids. Even better is that we get to see Bryan's grandparents. Gramps is in his early 90s and Grams is in her late 80s. Both are incredibly spry and it's such a great thing for them to be able to interact with their great grandkids! I really hope both kids are able to have great memories of the times they got to spend together.
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| Noelle requests silly versions of our pictures these days! |
--The biggest first was, of course, Christmas! We had a great Christmas and everyone kept commenting on what a happy and calm baby Theo is. As we were sitting down to dinner on Christmas Eve, my aunt commented that he is definitely a second child as Theo sat calmly in his car seat the entire time!
We had my immediate family over to open gifts on Christmas Eve, then we all went to my aunt and uncle's house for dinner and more presents with my grandma and cousins.
Christmas morning is all about being at home with our kids. Bryan and I feel strongly about having this tradition for our kids and hope to always be able to do it.
After opening presents and having breakfast we headed down to Rockford for more family and presents time.
While the kids definitely got spoiled, our families do a pretty good job of holding back and not getting them an insane amount of gifts.
After opening presents and having breakfast we headed down to Rockford for more family and presents time.
While the kids definitely got spoiled, our families do a pretty good job of holding back and not getting them an insane amount of gifts.
Christmas with kids is just so magical and means so much more to us than any Christmases we had before kids. I don't know what it was about this holiday season but I just didn't want it to end. This has definitely been one of my favorite Christmases. I'm thinking the cute kids definitely had something to do with that!
Health:
--Theo's torticollis is looking much better and his PT decided toward the end of December that we could start going every other week as he was responding to therapy very well. Yay!
--After a few nights of really awful gas at night that was seriously messing with his ability to sleep, we put two and two together and realized it always happened on the days we gave him squash. (We decided to give him homemade butternut squash puree as his first solid food.) Once we stopped this, he stopped having terrible gas pains. We decided to wait a couple of weeks and try again. This was in early December and right after Christmas we started up again. Despite wanting to avoid traditional baby food, we felt that oatmeal would be a good gateway food if we were dealing with a sensitive stomach. So far, so good!
--Nursing hit a bump in the middle of December. Even though our freezer stash was no more, I was able to keep him exclusively breast fed by pumping once before bed and as often as I could on the weekends. Unfortunately, I got a bad case of strep throat in mid-December and was beyond down for the count. Between just being sick and the antibiotics, my already sensitive and lowish supply took a big hit. At this time we had to start supplementing with formula. This was insanely difficult for me and it took me a while to be ok with it. I'm now comfortable with the whole thing, and while my supply did bounce back, it still hasn't been enough and Theo gets anywhere from 2-4 oz of formula during weekdays. He is still being fed breast milk 95% of the time and I just can't be mad at the number. It's a fantastic thing I'm able to do for him, no matter the breakdown.
Sleep (Saving the best [worst?] for last!)
While all of the holiday traveling itself didn't bring up any issues, the deviation from schedules did - big time. We are starting to see that Theo is a creature of habit, especially when sleep is involved. We only stayed over one night during Thanksgiving and thank goodness for that. [Not the visiting family part, just the terrible sleep part ;)] I think I slept about 2 hours total that night. Theo would scream the second I set him down in the pack n play so we ended up cosleeping and nursing for comfort pretty much all night long. While I love lots of things about cosleeping, the anxiety I get is not one of them. So when we do cosleep, I am pretty alert and don't get a lot of sleep. Thank you God for coffee! And a husband who let's me sleep in without any grief!
We had similar issues with our trip to Minneapolis involving the sleeping patterns (or lack thereof) of our youngest. Theo had a pretty stuffy nose that weekend and had a really hard time staying asleep. He kept snorting himself awake and just couldn't breath. So again, he and I coslept in one queen bed while Bryan and Noelle shared the other one.
--Theo's torticollis is looking much better and his PT decided toward the end of December that we could start going every other week as he was responding to therapy very well. Yay!
--After a few nights of really awful gas at night that was seriously messing with his ability to sleep, we put two and two together and realized it always happened on the days we gave him squash. (We decided to give him homemade butternut squash puree as his first solid food.) Once we stopped this, he stopped having terrible gas pains. We decided to wait a couple of weeks and try again. This was in early December and right after Christmas we started up again. Despite wanting to avoid traditional baby food, we felt that oatmeal would be a good gateway food if we were dealing with a sensitive stomach. So far, so good!
--Nursing hit a bump in the middle of December. Even though our freezer stash was no more, I was able to keep him exclusively breast fed by pumping once before bed and as often as I could on the weekends. Unfortunately, I got a bad case of strep throat in mid-December and was beyond down for the count. Between just being sick and the antibiotics, my already sensitive and lowish supply took a big hit. At this time we had to start supplementing with formula. This was insanely difficult for me and it took me a while to be ok with it. I'm now comfortable with the whole thing, and while my supply did bounce back, it still hasn't been enough and Theo gets anywhere from 2-4 oz of formula during weekdays. He is still being fed breast milk 95% of the time and I just can't be mad at the number. It's a fantastic thing I'm able to do for him, no matter the breakdown.
Sleep (Saving the best [worst?] for last!)
While all of the holiday traveling itself didn't bring up any issues, the deviation from schedules did - big time. We are starting to see that Theo is a creature of habit, especially when sleep is involved. We only stayed over one night during Thanksgiving and thank goodness for that. [Not the visiting family part, just the terrible sleep part ;)] I think I slept about 2 hours total that night. Theo would scream the second I set him down in the pack n play so we ended up cosleeping and nursing for comfort pretty much all night long. While I love lots of things about cosleeping, the anxiety I get is not one of them. So when we do cosleep, I am pretty alert and don't get a lot of sleep. Thank you God for coffee! And a husband who let's me sleep in without any grief!
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| You can never have too many sleeping baby pictures - it's pretty much a rule of life. If only he could sleep like this all the time! |
Travels aside, Theo was having a really hard time falling asleep in late November and early December. It was the whole "falling asleep in my arms but waking up the second I put him down" thing. It's pretty obvious that his incoming teeth are really bothering him. During the day he is drooling like a rabid dog and chewing on anything possible.
Tangent - this type of thing (issues with sleeping, or not sleeping I should say) would have, and did, really bothered me when Noelle was a baby. I would beat myself up wondering why my baby just can't sleep through the night (stuffy nose aside). This time? I just take it in stride, drink an extra cup of coffee and count my blessings. I remind myself that this is such a short season and will soon be a distant, and not entirely unwelcome, memory.
Tangent - this type of thing (issues with sleeping, or not sleeping I should say) would have, and did, really bothered me when Noelle was a baby. I would beat myself up wondering why my baby just can't sleep through the night (stuffy nose aside). This time? I just take it in stride, drink an extra cup of coffee and count my blessings. I remind myself that this is such a short season and will soon be a distant, and not entirely unwelcome, memory.
I can't believe we've hit the six month mark! That countdown to the one year milestone is getting closer and closer!
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