Dear Bo, 6 months...your half birthday!

6 months old!  Here's what you're up to:

• You wear 3-6 month clothes.  
• You have about 1 week left in Size 2 diapers, then we're movin' on up!
• At your last appointment (2 weeks ago), you weighed 17 pounds, 5 ounces  (50th percentile) and were 25.25 inches long (25th percentile).
• You roll over from front to back a lot and are trying to make it from back to front now.
• You are trying to sit up, but you fall forward pretty easily.

• You can maintain a sitting position for a little bit if we "set you up" just right.
• Your smile covers your whole face.  I love it!

• You have a great giggle.
• You coo a lot.  You have been "talking" up a storm lately.  You absolutely love to be talked to.
• You like to blow bubbles with your spit.
• You have discovered your feet and like to do "toe-touches".

• You like bath time.  You kick your chubby legs in the water.  You don't like when we rinse the soap out of your hair though.
• You are finally swaddle free and Nap Nanny free!  You sleep on your tummy.  This is a huge blessing!
• You slept through the night 3 times this month!
• You started solids a week ago.  So far, you love everything you've tried (apples, pears, and squash).  You eat like an old pro.  Like most little boys, you don't like it when I clean your face and hands after you eat.
• You've started reaching out and touching our faces.  It's so sweet.  It especially melts my heart when you do this when I rock you.  
• You love tummy time now!

• This was a hard month.  It caught me by surprise because I really thought we were past the really hard part.  You seemed to turn such a corner last month!  It was a nightmare 4 weeks (reminded me a lot of the four week period when you were 8-12 weeks old).  You suddenly stopped sleeping at night.  You were up every 1-2 hours flopping, squirming, shrieking from gas pains (at least that's what we thought it was).  You also stopped eating well.  Almost every feeding except for the middle of the night feeding, you would stiffen, arch your back, and scream when we tried to feed you.  Then during the day, you would randomly have these "spells" of shrieking.  It was all just awful.  We felt so bad for you.  I stopped nursing you and put you on an elemental formula (Nutramigen AA).  They also did a scope to rule out that your esophagus was injured.  And just as suddenly as it started...it stopped.  For the last 5 days, you have seemed like such a happy, comfortable baby.  You have had no "spells", only about 1 bad feeding a day (if that), and you're back to sleeping at night.  We are so very thankful.
• During the 4 week nightmare, you had no schedule at all.  Whenever we could get you to sleep, we did, you were up every couple of hours in the night, you often thought the middle of the night was social hour(s), and you would get up super early--like 5am or 6am.  Now...you're closer to your "old self".  You generally wake about 7:30-8am.  You take a full bottle (5 ounces) then eat a jar of fruit.  You take a 1-2 hour nap in the morning then drink another bottle and have 1/2 a jar of veggies and half a jar of fruit.  You take another 1-2 hour nap in the afternoon then have another bottle.  We feed you another 1/2 jar of veggies and 1/2 jar of fruit in the evening then give you a bottle before bed.  You usually take your last bottle between 8-9pm.  Generally, you wake up at around 2am to eat, but you've slept through the night 3 times this month so I know you have it in you!
• You have started to drink a lot less now that you're eating baby food.  You generally take a full bottle in the morning and before bed (5-5.5 ounces) and 3-4 ounces at the other feedings.
• You are much easier to put down for naps and in the evening now.  We certainly can't just lay you in bed, but there is a lot less wrestling than before.
• You are also much better with getting your pj's on after bath time.  For the last couple of months, you've screamed like we're torturing you when it's pj time, but you've now decided it's not so bad!

 Just look how you've grown: