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!