Carter - Six Months

Diapers

Still in size 2’s.  Size 3 starts at 16 pounds, which Carter just now passed on the scale yesterday.  Size 2 Pampers Swaddlers still fit really well so it may be a couple of weeks before we move to 3’s.  I’ve determined that I REALLY dislike the 12 hour overnight diaper.  We bought a pack of those and the size 2’s are way smaller than the normal Pampers size 2’s and every time Carter wore them overnight, he’d pee through it and onto his outfit. 

Clothes

Mainly wearing 3-6 months clothes.  Most of his 3 month clothes still fit and I’ve even gone out and bought some 6 month clothes thinking they would fit only to find out that they pretty much fall off of him.  My baby is kind of on the small side right now apparently.

Nursing/Introduction to Solids

Carter still loves to nurse and still plays with my clothes when he’s nursing.  He is also still easily distracted and turns around to see what’s going on.  The amount of time it takes him to eat is double what it normally is if daddy is in his line of view.  At 5 months, Carter was still eating 5 times a day at around 6-6.5oz each feeding.  Right around 5 1/2 months, he decided to drop a feeding all on his own.  His naps were rarely less than 2 hours and we started keeping him awake between naps for 2 hours instead of 1 1/2 hours.  This change caused the 4th feeding to be way too close to the 5th feeding, so we’ve just dropped the 5th feeding and pushed back the 4th one.  We also increased his bottle to 7oz.  For example:

At 5 months, Carter had the below schedule:

7:30/7:45    Eat

10:45/11ish Eat

2/2:30ish      Eat

5:30                 Eat

7:30                 Eat

At 5 1/2 months, the schedule changed to this:

7:30/7:45     Eat

11:30ish         Eat

3:30ish           Eat

7:15ish           Eat

He was waking up from his 3rd nap around 6-6:15pm and there was no way I could feed him then and then again at 7:30.  Those feedings were just too close.  So once he woke up, I just let him watch a Baby Einstein DVD or let him play in the living room until bath time at 7 and then he ate before bed like usual.  So I just kind of held him off from eating which ended up causing us to drop that 5th feeding.

When Carter was 5 months and 3 weeks (to the day pretty much), we started solids.  We’ve been using the single grain rice cereal and mixing with breastmilk.  The first week it was only once a day and now we’re eating cereal three times a day.  Because I’m just THAT mom, I wanted to get his first taste of solid foods on video:

That was the only time Carter has had that kind of reaction to the rice cereal.  The next night, he pretty much devoured it.  After a few days, we increased the amount of cereal to two tablespoons and a few days after that to three tablespoons and then to 1/4 cup, which is the most of the cereal he’ll ever get.  He rarely eats the entire 1/4 cup when mixed with 3oz of breastmilk, but usually eats most of it.  We start our first round of vegetables this weekend.  I plan to start with carrots and squash and then introduce sweet potatoes because I’ve heard that every baby loves sweet potatoes, so they need to be introduced last of the three “yellow” vegetables, otherwise he’ll want nothing but those and won’t eat the other two.

Sleep

Carter still sleeps on average around 12 hours every night (7:30pm-7:30am) but when daddy is in town, he doesn’t have to wake up as early as mommy to go to work, so Carter usually doesn’t end up getting up until around 8:30am those days.  The bedtime routine has been the same for several months.  Bath at 7pm, bottle/nurse around 7:20 and bed at 7:30ish.  I love our bedtime routine.  It’s just me and Carter and I rock him while feeding his bottle.  I say (out loud) the prayer “As I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  And should I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”.  That’s followed by an actual prayer from Carter’s point of view where we thank God for mommy and daddy and all our grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and for the food in our tummy, the roof over our head, and the bed we sleep in and also for Jesus.  Then I sing Jesus Loves Me in a very low voice to try to make him sleepy.  I’m all about making sure my kid knows that prayers before bed is a must in his life.

Gradually Dropping the Third Nap and the Woombie

According to Babywise, babies usually drop the third nap around 6-8 months.  Each day is a 50/50 shot on whether he takes 3 naps a day or not.  The first two naps range anywhere from 1 1/2 hours to 3 hours in length.  His third one is where we’re struggling.  If he takes one, he’ll only sleep for around 45 minutes to an hour.  If he doesn’t take one I usually end up pushing up his bedtime by 15-20 minutes or so.  This nap dropping started a week before he turned 6 months old.  Around the same time that Carter began deciding to drop the third nap on his own, we took him out of the woombie for good.  The woombie is like a swaddle, even with the arms out.  The section around his body is tight and is meant to be.  At 6 months old, I didn’t want to “swaddle” him any longer.  So I stocked up on sleep sacks and his first nighttime sleep in a sleep sack was June 17th (Father’s Day).  He napped in it earlier that day and did fine so I let him sleep in it that night and he didn’t make a peep all night long. 

Waketime

Now that Carter is 6 months old, we’ve extended each of his waketimes to 2 hours from the usual 1 1/2 hours.  Shockingly, he’s adjusted pretty well to it, as long as he’s doing something or has something to play with.  I’ve found the easiest ways to keep him self-entertained for long periods of time is taking him on errands in the car or setting him up in a bouncy seat to watch Baby Einstein.  We even watched Sesame Street on the Sprout channel for the first time the other day.  I think he really likes the puppets.  He’s also slowly getting adjusted to the exersaucer.  I was really hoping he’d like it but he hasn’t been able to stay in it longer than 10 minutes or so in the past.  Lately, he’s made it up to 20 minutes.  What we’ve really noticed lately is that if we do take him somewhere during a waketime and allow him to fall asleep in the car on the way home, he will not take the nap he should be taking when he gets home.  Even if he only sleeps for about 20 minutes on the way home from somewhere, in his mind he’s had his powernap and he’s ready to go.  I’ve literally had to sit in the back seat with him when Justin drives home from church in order to keep him awake so that he’ll fall asleep for his nap.

Statistics

Carter’s 6 month appointment was today and he weighed in at 16lbs 2oz (30th percentile) and measured 26 3/4 inches long (75th percentile).  I was a little concerned about the weight but the doctor said that a drop like that is normal for this age because babies become so much more active and they’re burning a lot more calories than they were as newborns.  Sweet boy got tired waiting on the nurse to come in and give him his shots so he fell asleep on me.

I am GREATLY going to miss when he doesn’t do this anymore :( 

Abilities

Things he’s doing:

• When sitting in his bouncy seat watching DVD’s, he pulls himself up to a sitting position.  This is hysterical to me and Justin.  He refuses to lay back and watch them anymore:

• He reaches for me or Justin when he’s on the floor or in someone else’s arms.
• He can sit up by himself extremely well now, but I still feel uncomfortable leaving him sitting in one room while I’m in another.  I do, however, leave him sitting in the pack n’ play because he can’t really hurt himself in that.  He’s also showing interest in sitting up during bathtime.   We have to force him to lay back so that we can actually bathe him.  Last night I attempted a big boy bath for the first time.  It wasn’t too bad, and he loved the freedom of the huge tub to grab at his toys.  I still think we’ll use the baby bath tub for bit longer though.
• He pretty much ALWAYS has his thumb in his mouth and if I’m changing his outfit, when I’m putting his right hand (his thumb of choice) into the sleeve, he’ll take that thumb out of his mouth so I can use his hand and put his left thumb in his mouth until I’m done and then he’ll put his right thumb back in his mouth.  The kid can’t even go 10 seconds without a appendage in his mouth.  I fear the day we have to wean him of that.  But for now, I’m glad he knows how to self-soothe.
• He still grabs for his bottle the second he sees it and has gotten significantly better at getting the nipple in his mouth on this first try!  He can also hold the bottle on his own!!!  Justin sent me this picture the other day while I was at work:

• I’ve been trying to work with him on crawling, but he’s just not there yet.  I think he’s focusing all his efforts on the sitting up right now and he’s putting off crawling for another time.  He has, however, in the past couple of days shown an interest in crawling backwards onto his knees and pushing off of them, but he doesn’t really go anywhere because he’s not using arms and legs the right way and he’s only done that a couple of times.  He’ll figure it out soon.
• He grabs onto any and everything within reach, particularly your face.  He loves to play with faces.  He will put his hand into my mouth and grab onto my lip and pull as hard as he can.  He’s got a good grip, I’ll give him that!
• When he gets excited, he starts hitting himself in the stomach.  I would think that would be painful but he does it EVERY SINGLE TIME the little worm from the Baby Einstein DVD’s comes across the screen and also during our walks around the neighborhood when he’s in the Baby Bjorn.  And he pretty much does it anytime he sees a dog.
• I’ve read that this is the time to show your baby the difference between right and wrong.  So when Carter does something he isn’t supposed to do (pulls on my shirt while nursing or beats the tray during a feeding) I hold onto his hands, look him in the eye and say “No Carter.  We don’t do that”.  The tone of voice has to be firm and different than my normal tone.  It’s hard for me to do this because in my mind, he’s still a little baby that’s too young for that.  But you gotta start early I guess!  Last Sunday, I was nursing him after church at my in-laws house and he started pulling at my shirt and I said “No Carter”.  He started laughing hysterically.  Probably not a good sign for the future.
• I’ve been constantly saying “Mama” and pointing to myself or doing the sign for Mommy when referring to myself.  I plan to start teaching Carter sign language at between 6 and 7 months old, which is what is suggested by Babywise.  For now, I think he recognizes that I’m Mama.  He’ll be looking in a completely different direction and when me or Justin say “Where’s Mama”, he looks straight at me.  Right now, the only signs we’ve practiced are “mommy” and “eat”.  I think he knows what the eat sign means too.  He obviously doesn’t do the sign on his own yet, but I think he understands what it means.

Other Notable Things

Carter’s hair is finally starting to grow like crazy!  Justin and I started noticing he had a lot more hair right when he turned 5 months.  It’s still hard to see in pictures because it’s still pretty blonde, but it’s there, I assure you.  Lots of it!

Carter’s first tooth poked right on through his gums at 5 1/2 months old.  Thankfully, it’s not affecting him.  His sleep is still normal and his attitude and general mood are the same as usual.  The only time I really notice a difference is at night right before bathtime.  I do think that’s when it hurts him the most, but he’s still not overly fussy by any means.  The tooth right next to it is also starting to pop in as well.  The picture below was taken right when it started popping through.  There’s actually a full blown tooth there now so I should try to get another picture.

Carter been noticing Gizmo exists the past couple of months, but during this month, HOLY COW.  He follows her everywhere she goes and wants to touch her constantly.  He’ll be sitting in the floor and if Giz is within his reach, he puts out both of his hands and leans forward to touch her.  Not long from now, I imagine we’ll have to be telling him to stop riding Giz like a horse!!  He likes other dogs too.  I think he’s just fascinated that they look nothing like us, but move like us.  We were at Tiffany and Trevor’s visiting baby Harper this month and their dog, Stanford, was walking around the living room and Carter was laughing hysterically at him.  Every time he saw Stan, he’d laugh.  It was so funny!!  He did the same thing to my mom’s dog, Libby.  Definitely think we have an animal lover on our hands…and I’m totally ok with that!

Examples of his attentiveness towards the Giz:

And my absolute favorites:

I feel for the poor dog once he does start crawling.

Likes

• Sleeping on his tummy
• Bathtime, but in particular, his favorite part of bathtime is getting out of the tub.  Weird, I know.  He has fun in the tub and smiles and laughs a lot, but when he sees mommy wipe off the side of the tub, sit down and put a towel over my lap, he gets GIDDY.  He loves being wrapped in the towel I guess.
• Being put in the Baby Bjorn and taking golf cart rides
• Baby Einstein CD’s.  I’ve discussed how much he loves the DVD’s, but some of the discovery kits we’ve gotten in the past not only come with a DVD, but also a CD to listen to in the car.  When Carter is really fussy in the car, all we have to do is put one of those CD’s in and it shuts him up permanently.  Seriously.  It works that great.  He just loves it.
• Being outside
• Sucking his thumb.  I really don’t want him to get too used to this.  Any suggestions would be grateful here.  We’re trying to “re-introduce” the pacifier and maybe he’ll like it better now that he can control his hands more.  I just don’t want him to get used to sucking his thumb and have to figure out how to break that habit when he’s 2.  A pacifier is easy to take away.  I can’t exactly cut off his thumb!
• The period right after a nap is over or right when he wakes up for the morning.  He is so happy when he wakes up and is such a hoot.  He makes me laugh with his smile.
• Gizmo.  I mean, LOVES Gizmo
• Sitting up in his crib and playing with the music mobile attached to the crib

 

Dislikes

• Not sure if I’ve ever put this as a dislike before, but if not, Carter really dislikes being put into his carseat and has disliked this pretty much since birth.  Once he’s in and all strapped down, he’s fine and actually enjoys car rides, but he despises being put into and strapped into the car seat.
• Having clothes put on him.  He doesn’t mind them being taken off, I think he thinks that every time we take off his outfit that it means bathtime and he is okay with that.  But he hates it when we put clothes on him.
• Getting bored if he’s been doing one activity for too long. 

Justin and I are extremely blessed with Carter.  The above dislikes are pretty much the only time Carter cries (aside from when he’s tired and we’ve kept him up for too long).  He’s a pretty happy baby and I feel so blessed that God chose us to raise him!

On a completely unrelated note, please pray for my husband.  Justin leaves today to fly to Washington to climb Mt. Rainier, a mere one week after a guide died on the mountain.  I know that was a rare and isolated event, but still scary nonetheless!