6 months old!

At 6 months old Leo is so perfectly squishy, lovable, and fun.

Every single day is the best day ever.
I love the first thing in the morning when this sweet baby wakes me up with his sounds and big bright eyes.
His favorite thing to do currently is blow raspberries.  Slobbers everywhere!!!!
His second favorite thing to do is suck on his toes.  Still the cutest thing I've ever seen.




He is not quite really crawling, but he can move pretty fast!  He rolls from place to place or scoots backwards.  He can hop forwards or move his knees a few inches but he hasn't figured out the coordination or moving his hands AND knees.
Very soon though.

Just this past week he learned how to push himself up from his belly to a seated position.  I left him on the blanket in the living room one day and came back a minute later to find him at least 5 feet away and sitting up.  Crazy!  Now I can't take my eye off of him or he has to be confined to his jumper or exersaucer if I leave the room.

He goes in circles on his belly and it's so funny.  He has figured out how to pull over his little basket of toys in the living room and goes back and forth between them all.

His current favorite toys are his Elmo book (I don't like Elmo. lol. but it's a puppet book to If You're Happy and You Know and he likes it.... so I allow it.  He LOVES puppets), he loves his seahorse glow worm, his football, and his drum -especially the drum stick.

He went to his first Infant Rhyme Time at the library last week and had so much fun watching the other little ones.  He didn't pay too much attention to the librarian, except for when she brought out a puppet (this is like paybacks.... I have always HATED puppets) and he liked when we sang songs.  I'll probably go back with him because it's not like our schedule is too busy and the library is less than a mile away.

He is a super social baby.  Sundays are super fun for him because he gets passed around the entire church basically and every old person makes goofy faces at him to make him smile.  He is so sweet he just goes with it and flashes everyone a smile to make their day.  I think I'm going to bite the bullet and let him go to the nursery soon.  He really doesn't do well through the church service any more, mostly because church starts at 10:30, nap time, but he hates to miss out on a minute of action so he fights sleep... whereas if he was in the nursery he might let one of the ladies rock him to sleep or at least be mad about not sleeping elsewhere.  I don't know though... I'm sure they'd take great care of him and he'd be like 20 yards away from me, but I still am hesitant.  Now that he does sit up really well though I feel better about it because it's like he can sorta fend for himself a bit more.  Maybe by 7 months...

He goes next week for his 6 month check up so I don't know exactly how much he weighs or how long he is, but trust me it's a lot ;)  My best guess is around 21lbs.
He is now wearing 9-12 month clothing.  Definitely 12 months in pants.  Although some 6 month onsies still fit... I hate that all the brands are not consistent.  I wish I had the know how to design baby clothes... especially for boys.  I love for him to wear clothes that look like adult clothes. lol.  Jeans, polos, button ups, etc... but sometimes I also like for him to wear super traditional baby boy outfits :) I'm allowed to change my mind.

This month he had his first taste of food!
I'll do an entire post about my decision to go with what food and why soon, but for now I'll just tell you that we eventually did decide to start with rice cereal and then after about 4-5 days of that we introduced avocado.  His first experience with food he did SO well!  I was shocked, I mean I know this baby likes to eat, but still it was sometime entirely new and he just went with it.
Right now he very much prefers the cereal to the avocado.  He liked the avocado at first, but today (his 4th time having it) he made faces like "this is gross" after every bite and then gagged himself to the point of vomiting.  yikes!  That was the end of that meal... and we'll be moving on to squash tomorrow.


And finally we come to sleeping....
Leo is doing better, but is still not a champion sleeper by any stretch.
He is doing really well at self soothing, putting himself to sleep for naps really, really well.  I see he's getting sleepy (around his eyes turn red the instant he's tired - pretty convenient!) and I lay him down in his crib and he's out within seriously a couple minutes.   At night it takes a little longer. I feed him and he gets sleepy and I lay him down awake and he puts himself to sleep within a few minutes.  Some nights he falls asleep nursing and I just let him.... I love to cuddle him asleep.  I usually take him into our bedroom and nurse him lying down because he's getting so heavy it's easier to do it this way and I get to snuggle him.  He's so, so, so precious when he's asleep.

He gets up around 8am, naps around 10:30-11 for around an hour to an hour and half, but sometimes as long as 2 hours.  He then takes another nap in the afternoon around 2:30-3.  Depending on how long his morning nap was he may sleep for a longer stretch here, but usually around an hour.
I try to have him in bed by 7:30 and then after that every single night is different... he usually wakes up at least once, usually more between 11:30-2:30 and I am typically able to calm him down with patting him and offering the pacifer (he went on a several week strike from the paci, but I'm sometimes able to sneak it in at night) and get some more sleep.  Once he is over about 7 hours since his last feeding I usually give in and feed him and he'll make it until at least 6am when I feed him again and we sleep until about 8.  So I guess he's still eating twice in the night.... whatever.  It's working for me for now.
This month he's had his longest stretches yet!  Right after we started the rice cereal he slept for 9 hours! and then the next night for 8!  But..... then right back to waking up after about 5...
We'll get there someday.

I recently had a friend post on facebook that she was struggling with her newborn and was looking for help about sleeping (I offer no advice on that subject. lol) but she had people commenting things like "oh I did this and my 3 kids all slept 13 hours from 5 weeks on"
Five weeks.  Either you are lying or you are neglecting your baby.  And who things that is helpful to a new mom?? Leo is 6 months and if he sleep 6 hours I am doing good.  Just for future advice, if someone asks your advice and for some reason your baby sleeps OVER HALF the day (13 hours at 5 weeks, really? really?) then keep it to yourself.... and then go get your baby checked out by a doctor.  Or get a better monitor so you can actually hear that your baby is in fact not asleep for those 13 hours.
Man, for some reason that just really annoyed me and I was just reading it on someone else's fb post.

Ok, calming down...

Here's Leo swinging the first time!

Facetiming with Daddy who works too much for this mommy and baby's liking :(

the blinds are his favorite toy....

And we've been working on our selfies! 

Don't let that face fool you... he loves it! 

He is such a chill baby.  Lee was saying he just knows how to relax and it's so cute...  he just reclines in his stroller and takes in the sights.

Grandma and Grandpa came to visit!!!

I have more pictures on my regular camera but these are from my phone and easiest to upload from the blogger app...