Life's Greatest Blessings: Half-Birthday!

Six months have passed since this little blessing came into our lives. We are forever changed. Samuel Reid is six-months old today . . . HALF a year! As I told Caleb this morning (who LOVES to tell anyone that he is "shree and a half"), Sammy is just "and a half". ha At his well-check at the doctor's office, he weighed in at 16 lb. .5 oz. (25%) and was 27" long (74%). This month, by far, has been the most fun and busy month with Samuel. He has done so much this month and has grown and changed a ton! We have had lots of birthday parties and play dates with friends. Not much traveling this month since we've been so busy on the weekends. Mommy celebrated her first mother's day as a Mommy of TWO handsome boys! So blessed!

Samuel started baby food this month and immediately took right to it, just as if he has being doing it forever. We were going to wait until he turned 6 months old but at about 5.5 months he was showing us he was ready and meeting all the milestones suggested before starting. We decided to give it a try and see how it went. He's a super neat eater and rarely even drips on his bib ( I know this will change!). His first food was avocados. He ate them but with a wrinkled nose and weird scowl on his face. You could tell he wasn't quite sure about that new flavor. The next food he tried was bananas. Let's just say I think he's part monkey! He so far has LOVED everything sweet (who doesn't?) and tolerated everything not-so-sweet. Nothing has been completely rejected. In addition to the avocados and bananas he has also tried peaches, green beans, butternut squash, oatmeal, and pears. Not sure what we'll try next!

At the beginning of this month Samuel was really beginning to fight sleep even more. He has never been a great sleeper but he began waking up all night long, every 30-45 minutes sometimes, and was taking wwaayy too much walking, bouncing, shhhing, etc. to get back to sleep . . . only to repeat it all again less than an hour later. All. night. long. He also kept flipping himself over onto his tummy while swaddled or breaking his arms free and getting frustrated. This also was happening for naps, which were about 20 minutes in length. Mommy and Daddy (but mostly Mommy) were completely exhausted and at the end of their rope. With Caleb, we had a lot of success with the Ferber method so we decided to give it a good try with Samuel too. Well, after a couple of rough nights (literally only 2-3), Samuel is sleeping so much better! He now goes into the Pack-N-Play in our bedroom awake, rolls over, and puts himself to sleep most of the time in just a few minutes. He is down to waking 1-2 times per night to eat and then right back down to sleep. Plus, he also is now sleeping unswaddled! Only thing that has changed for the worse is that he now thinks 5:00 A.M. is wake-up time. Ugh. He wakes up happy and babbling though so it may just be that he is a morning person (he surely didn't get that from Mommy!). Naps are still a work in progress but it's common for them to take longer to train.

Samuel has also started pulling his knees up randomly every now and then and is sitting up pretty well. He still topples over sometimes so we don't go to far when he's sitting. He loves babbling and smiling and turning his head to make sure Mommy doesn't leave his sight. When we're outside he's a big fan of watching Caleb run "fast as Dash" (Incredibles) and putting his toes in the grass (and usually some grass in his mouth).

Month 6 Favorites: