6 months, 3 weeks

So many things!

1.  Pulling up
Baby Man can now pull himself up on anything and everything.  He first did this last week (I think on Tuesday), and now it is not surprising to walk out of a room, and to walk back in only 30 seconds later to find that he has crawled over to something and pulled himself up.  We'll be lowering the crib later this week.  I'm not going to lie though, it is one of the cutest things to walk into his room to see him standing in the crib, smiling!

2. Cutting teeth
As of Saturday, Maxwell's lower left font tooth has begun to appear.  The gum is gone completely, so the little tooth is making its way to the surface.  On Sunday, he decided that it would be fun to bite me while nursing... I can tell you that it was definitely not fun.  He hasn't done it since then (knocking on wood), but I'm guessing that I startled him pretty well when I yelled out in surprise!  People don't lie when they say that the baby teeth are sharp.

3. Food
While Max still loves his bottles and nursing, he's starting to seem to enjoy food a bit more, especially if he thinks that he is feeding himself.  We have been offering more pouches in hopes that he'll try more things before trying to shove a rejected spoonful in his mouth.  This past weekend, he enjoyed a strawberry banana pouch, and devoured it over 3 feedings.  He also has been loving his sweet potatoes.  Puffs have officially entered out house, and half the time, the puffs don't make it into his mouth, but he does really seem to like the few he eats!

The first food he ever ate was mashed avocado.  He HATED it.  Gagged, spit it out, turned his head away... we tried it again, still hated it.  Fast forward to this week.  I cut up slices and offered the full slice to him.  It was too slick and kept sticking to the table, so I tried freezing the slices.  The next day, he went to town on his popsicado!  Hopefully he continues to enjoy the avocado, so he can get those good fats (not that he isn't gaining mega rolls already)

4. Discovered his penis
If we were ever uncertain of the sex of our child, all uncertainty is now gone, and this one is all boy.  Luke called me into the bathroom the other day, as he was giving Max a bath.  Lo and behold, I walk in and see that Max is grabbing his penis.  He has joined the brotherhood of men. Al Bundy style, hand-in-the-pants men.

5. Stairs
Max also decided that he wanted to attempt the first couple of stairs in our basement.  I assisted him through the first stair, and then I called it quits.  I'm not ready to have a baby that can climb stairs!

6. IKEA
On Sunday, Max had his first IKEA experience.  The last time Luke and I braved the crazies was before Max was born, so it was funny to realize how much more time we spend in the baby section than we ever have in the past.  We ended up buying some starter track for Max's train collection. Luke had a ton of fun setting up the train, and Max had a ton of fun destroying everything that Papa put together!

6 months, 2 weeks

Happy Tuesday!  We had an extended weekend due to Presidents' Day, so Luke and I were able to enjoy an extra day at home with Maxwell before jumping into a shortened, but crazy busy week.  Why is it that the shortest weeks always feel the longest?  We've got 3 more work days, and then two full weeks before the end of the Trimester.

This past week, I finally got a chance to work on our taxes.  In the past, I used to LOVE putting together and filing our taxes because we always got some money back (I know, I know... free loan to the gov't... should try to get as close to $0 as possible...blah blah blah).  It was always a welcomed chunk of cash that we could put toward something fun.  Then, two years ago, Luke got a promotion and it bumped us into the lowest part of the next tax bracket.  That year, SURPRISE!  We owed a couple grand in taxes.  We made some adjustments for the next year, but apparently we weren't actually savvy enough to figure out the amount we needed to have withheld, because again, we got slammed in April, owing another couple grand.  Thank goodness I have all the money I make for night school deposited into an extra account, so about half of that went to paying off the amount owed each year.  For this tax season, we were excited to add Max as a dependent.  The second I entered his SSN, I watched our total owed roll down, and this year we only owe about $150 (much better than the thousands we thought we might owe!).  Just for shits and giggles, I took out my night school job to see how much we would owe if our income dropped, and I found that if I didn't work my night school job, we would get back just about what I make teaching 1x/week (after we take out what we typically owe).  Which takes me to my big announcement:

I'M QUITTING NIGHT SCHOOL!

I've totaled it up, and after tonight, I have only 14 more sessions to teach, and then I'll be free.  While this year has actually been the most rewarding night school experience I have had in the 5 years of working here, I miss being with my son more than I am enjoying teaching at night.  You have NO idea how badly I want to run around the halls, telling people that I'm not coming back next year, but I figure that I will save that conversation for May.  I really like the students I have had this year, and I will miss them, but I will definitely be much happier spending the evenings with my kid.  I know it's cliche, but he is growing up SO fast, and I don't want to miss a minute.

Speaking of my kid....

Coasters are the best.

Max and baby cousin Adeline chilling in their carseats.

He's been a blast lately (90% of the time).  He's so smiley, and so proud of his ability to get himself wherever he would like to go.  His crawling skills have improved even more, and he crawls up on all fours without dragging his belly on the ground!  He also does a perfect downward dog, and attempts to "walk" like the dogs do in that position.

We have found that he really likes the Happy Baby sweet potato pouches.  He has been wary of the spoon lately (probably from the time we tried to feed him pear with cinnamon, and he HATED it), so it has been helpful to let him play with the pouch, open it, let him put it in his mouth, and then give it a little squeeze so that he eats a bit directly from the pouch.  Once he's remembered that he likes the sweet potatoes, he'll accept it from the spoon (with occasional slurps from the pouch).  He wouldn't be a member of our pack if he didn't have some strange little quirks :)  He also likes the Happy Baby teether wafers.  He had his first one yesterday, and it was fun to see him feeding himself.  He's also tried feeding himself steamed broccoli and seemed to enjoy the fact that he could put the food in his own mouth.  Luke and I get nervous when he tries pieces of real food, but he's getting pretty good at figuring out how to mash things with his gums.

My kid now has chunky thighs!

The other 10% of the time, he's been a bit of a terror.  This happens almost exclusively at night.  The last two nights, he's been so clingy, and refuses to sleep in his crib for longer than 1-2 hours, and then he needs to be touching me.  Two nights ago, he was up nearly every hour, and it was hard to get him to go back to sleep (he hadn't pooped yet, so he was uncomfortable).  Last night, after his hour in the crib, he woke up SCREAMING, and it took us a good 20 minutes to comfort him to the point where he was ready to go back to sleep.  It hurts me to see him so upset :(  I'm glad that these moments aren't too frequent, and that he is a perfect kiddo for my mom during the day.

Hopefully next week's update will include more positive sleep news, but if not, that's okay.  He won't want to sleep in bed with us when he's a teenager, so it will end someday... I hope...

6 months 1 week!

It's tough being 1/2 year old...

But most of the time I'm a happy camper!

Max had a great 6 month appointment last week.  I tried to update the blog this past weekend, but he kept us very busy since Thursday!

The official 6 month report for MaxJack is:

• 16lbs 12 oz (~25th percentile)
• 28 inches long (~95 percentile)
• Perfect head shape
• Minor Eczema (prescribed a cream to help with the spots on his back)
• Possible allergy to something (he's had reoccurring minor redness, with no goop, under his right eye)

As of Thursday, I made it half way to my initial breastfeeding goal of 12 months.  Originally, I was dead set on 12 months, but when I had some issues with my supply dropping a bit last week, I realized that for my own mental health and well-being, I needed to make a mental adjustment to take breastfeeding one month at a time.  Yes, my long-term goal is still 12 months, but after having exclusively breastfed for 6 months already, I know that is a huge accomplishment in itself, so every extra month I make it past this point is a great bonus.  I've read that many women experience a scary supply drop around 6 months, so hopefully that's just what I am experiencing (Maxwell may also be going through a growth spurt- causing him to eat more at night, and making my 5am pumping session less effective).  I'm loading up on oatmeal, drinking lots of water, and keeping up with eating enough calories, so hopefully my supply will adjust itself again.  I'm still meeting all of Max's nutritional needs, so I shouldn't panic, but the crappy thing with pumping is that the change in output is glaringly obvious, and can be very stressful. I have a decent freezer stash now, so when I have an off day, I can pull a few ounces from the freezer to make up for what I didn't produce.

Now that we have hit the 6 month mark, we are being more purposeful with his solids intake.  For awhile, we'll be making sure that he gets at least two sessions of solids, and eventually bump it up so that by 9 months, he's getting a lot of his nutrients from solids (in addition to however often he wants to breastfeed).  Last night, I pushed his final solid feeding to closer to 6:30pm, and with that, we managed to get a much longer stretch of Max sleeping in his crib for the first part of the night!  He slept from 8:30pm-12:30am before needing to eat again, so I'm hoping that we can start to get a bit more food in him before bed, and perhaps he'll sleep even longer!  We'll be attempting some sort of sleep-training come the end of March when I am on Spring Break and can afford to be lacking in sleep for multiple days in a row, but for now, I was just grateful to see him sleep so soundly for that long of a stretch.

As for the solids, he was on a bit of a strike a week ago, and was refusing much of what we offered to him (though, I am attributing that to the fact that his tummy seemed to be a bit upset, which resulted in a huge increase in his #2 output).  After his appointment on Thursday, I decided to try plain oatmeal cereal, not expecting him to swallow any of it, but he really enjoyed it!  I had mixed it with warmed breastmilk, so I'm sure that the flavor was a bit more familiar to him.  Now, I've been adding apple puree to it, and he's been chowing down.  It takes a few spoonfuls to get him into it, but for the most part, he's been a happy camper.  With the introduction of a better routine with solids, we've been offering a sippy cup.  He LOVES our glasses (especially my water bottle), and freaks out whenever he sees us drinking, so we figured that now would be a great time to let him practice drinking on his own.

Baby Man continues to improve on his crawling, and seems to love the fact that he can make decisions on where he wants to go, and decides what he wants to see.  As of Saturday, his newest obsession is the dog dishes.  He can be anywhere in the back room, and as soon as he lays eyes on the shiny silver bowls, he is on a mission!

Tomorrow...

... Maxwell will be 6 months old.

His doctor's appointment is on Thursday, so I will update after I have his newest stats to report!  In the meantime, I'll leave you with this adorable face: