Charlie is 6 Months

First up, checkup stats:

28 1/4 inches long (95th percentile)
15 lb 13 oz (25th percentile)

He's a sweet little happy thing.  He's still not so sure about people outside of the immediate family, but he has taken more of a liking to my mom, so that's good.  He's been a bit later than Will on sitting up.  He's just in the last week started to be able to sit and play in the boppy pillow.  I think it will be another few weeks until he's doing it on his own.  He still loves watching Will.  He really enjoys playing in his exersaucer.

He's finally gotten on a pretty standard three-nap-a-day schedule (9:30 or so in the morning, 1:00 or so in the afternoon, and a short one in the evening around 4 or 5).  But it's really hard to keep him on schedule.  Between his naps and Will's nap I would never get to leave the house.  He's still not sleeping well at night.  Some nights he gets through (meaning he still wakes at 5 or 5:30 to eat so it's not like I'm getting 8 hours or anything here, people).  More often than not he's up in the middle of the night at least once, though.  The last 3 nights he's been up between 2 and 3.  Some nights he just needs a pacifier.  Some nights the only way I can get him back to sleep is by feeding him.  Sometimes if I feed him he'll sleep late the next day.  Other times he's still up at 5 (like this morning).  I keep telling myself that he's still better than Will was at this age.  I'm getting pretty exhausted, though.

We've started solids.  He's doing rice cereal, sweet potatoes, and squash so far.  He especially loves the veggies.  I tried avocado one day and I've also put some banana in with his cereal once.  He didn't do great with either of those.  I don't think he's quite ready for so much texture.  He seems to like the food and want to eat it, but he's having trouble keeping it in his mouth and swallowing it.  I asked the doctor at his checkup about it and he said it can take until 8 months for them to develop the coordination to pull food to the back of their mouth to swallow without spitting it out.  It's nothing to be worried about, I guess, but it sure does make for messy mealtime!

He's just so precious and sweet and cuddly.  I'm so lucky to be his mommy.  After Will was such a good baby I was really worried my next one would be a terror, but he's just the opposite :-)

Some Recent Will-isms

Will says and does some pretty amusing stuff these days. I thought I'd document and share. You know, for posterity.

1. The other day we were at dinner and Tim was drinking wine while Will was drinking milk out of a sippy cup. We look over at Will and he is mimicking Tim's every move. Tim swirled the wine in his wine glass. Will swirled his sippy around. Tim smelled his wine. Will smelled the top of his sippy cup. Then Tim took a drink and swished it in his mouth. Will did the same. Classic!

2. He had a little bit of a cold last week so his nose was runny. He kept running over to me all frantic and yelling that he had snot on his "mustache" and I needed to wipe it.

3. I made beef barley soup for dinner the other night. I put a bowl in front of him with two big pieces of stew beef in it. He looked at me very seriously and asked, "That poo poo?"

4. Background: when we went to my parents' house a few weeks ago for my birthday my dad let him color with permanent markers (which we refer to as "no no markers" in our house). Anyway, we had a book from the library about a little boy (Caillou) getting a new baby sister. In the book his mommy and daddy go to the hospital and Caillou stays at his grandma's house. So the other day Will tells me out of nowhere that he wants a little sister like Caillou. I said, "Really? How sweet!" He says, "Yeah, me want little sister so mommy and daddy go to hospital and me stay at PawPaw's house and color with no no markers". I guess that's as good of a reason as any to have another child...

There's not really a whole lot new with Will. We've made exactly zero progress on the potty front . I am glad to report that he's eating SO much better. We hardly have to fight with him on anything anymore. Even the beef barley soup he thought was feces he gobbled down without a word once I convinced him it was edible. I'm continuing to try to get him to try new things. I don't force him to eat everything. We had saurkraut the other night (which is one of my favorite things on earth) and he had to at least try it. He told me, "I no like it", though, so I didn't make him finish it. When I think about how far we've come it's actually pretty amazing. He still does get a cookie if he cleans his plate, though :-)

Things I Miss About Life Before Children

Don't get me wrong. I love my kids. I love being a mom. But life before they were around seems like this distant, almost unimaginable utopia sometimes. When I daydream about those days (which I do occasionally) here are the things that top my seemingly endless list of things I miss.

Browsing in bookstores

Reading for hours

Naps

Doing crossword puzzles

Sleeping in

Naps

Sleeping through the night

Leisurely showers

Naps

Eating with two hands

Being able to work out or run whenever I want

Naps

Going out without having to add a $50 babysitting tab to the cost of the evening

Going out period

Naps

Brunch on the weekends

Did I mention naps?

Working in the yard for longer than 15 minutes at a time and/or without being harassed every 10 minutes by Tim about how much longer I'm going to be

Shopping for clothes for myself

Running an errand quickly (like without having to get 1 or 2 kids in and out of a car seat) - thank god for drive-thru's!

I try to tell myself that there will be plenty of time for all of that later, though, when they're grown and too busy for me. Then I'll be missing the days when all they wanted to do was wake me up at the crack of dawn with a huge smile and play trains on the floor.