Dear Daniel, (SIX months!)

Your first Thanksgiving
(and both your parents were sick.)

Holy cow, Little One—a couple of days ago you turned six months old! I feel like I say this every month, but: I can't believe it's already been SIX months! I still remember the details of the labor and birth quite vividly, and every time I look at photographs from those early days, I'm just so surprised at how fast you're growing and changing. This week, for instance, one day you had flat, sparse baby hair, and the next day, your head was covered in fluffy, longer little boy hair. How does that happen?! (It even gets a little messed up in the back now after you've been down for a nap.)

More evidence of your growth: we had to adjust the convertible car seat up a size on the shoulder straps for the first time since your birth. You're starting to be a little too tall for the infant padding in the seat, too, but I'm not ready to take that out yet. At your six month doctor visit, you weighed 15 pounds, 1 ounce, and were 25 inches tall—look at you grow! You're now solidly in nine and twelve month clothes, due to your length. We're stocking up on baby leggings so we can stop buying pants for a while—you just grow out of them too darn fast!

Sleep has been all over the place this month. You were sleeping through the night with one nursing session in the middle of the night. Now, some nights you sleep for 12 hours, and some nights you wake up every hour or two. Napping, however, has gotten more consistent. You're usually able to sleep for an hour at a time (and sometimes even more!), instead of just 20 or 30 minutes. If we put you in the Ergo when you're tired, you'll usually fall asleep with a little convincing. I have faith that we will learn how to help you sleep, and you will figure out how to stay asleep longer. We just have to be patient! Lately, you've enjoyed falling asleep for the night being held by your Papa, with your head on his shoulder. It's so sweet to see you cuddled up with him like that every evening.

You fall asleep while petting your
stuffed animals most nights.

Speaking of cuddling, you've gotten so much more cuddly over the past month! You started reaching your arms out to be picked up, and then hugging us when we pick you up and put you near our shoulders. When you press your little head into my shoulder and squeeze me with your arms, my heart just melts. You're so loving! You can also wrap your arms around my neck and shoulder and hold on so tightly that I don't have to support your weight with my arms at all. You're like a little monkey. (I'm not saying I've let go of you many times, but I did once for just a second to see if you were really holding on. You were!)

Eddie is so patient with you.

Another thing you've gotten into doing is petting our hair (and also grabbing it and pulling, and you have a knack for pulling on those little, sensitive hairs at the back of my neck). You regularly pet Eddie, and he's very tolerant of you pulling on his ears and fur. Petting the kitty (or the soft stuffed bear or the really soft blanket) is something we've started doing when you're crying for long stretches. Soft things really seem to make you feel better. You also like to pat yourself on the top of the head and stroke your own hair, particularly when you're nursing and sleepy. I love that you're finding things that make you feel happy!

You nearly chewed a piece off of
this take-out box—I was impressed!

You've gotten really skillful at picking things up this month, and you can even pick up heavier objects like a large blanket or the telephone. You're very intentional about picking things up and grabbing for things now. You often reach for something that your Papa is working with (like a cell phone or a bowl) and try to bring it to your mouth to get to know it. A couple of times, you've gotten a hold of a napkin or a piece of paper, and bitten off chunks of it! When we take things away from you that you wanted to play with, you let us know how you feel about it. This is new—you now have a distinct and unmistakable opinion when we set a limit that you don't agree with. Fortunately, we almost always let you have what you want (only taking things away from you that are unsafe) so you don't have to express your negative opinion too often.

First taste of avocado!

You showed signs of readiness for solid foods this month, so we fed you some for the first time! Your first food was avocado (with breastmilk) and your second food was yams (with a little less breastmilk), which you ate for the first time on Thanksgiving. You seem to like the yams better, probably because they're sweet (and breastmilk is sweet, and that's what you're used to). At this point, you seem to prefer to eat off of Papa's finger as opposed to a spoon, and I can't say I blame you on that one! I'm sure being fed by hand is much better.

You'd rather suck Papa's
thumb than your own.

Besides eating, you've been doing all sorts of other new things with your mouth this month. The first thing is you figured out how to blow raspberries (which I just learned is also called an unvoiced linguolabial trill). It can get pretty messy when you do it, as your saliva starts flying everywhere! (We don't mind.) The other delightful thing you've started to do is babble in sentences. Your sentences (usually something like "Ahh ba-lah ba, bah lahhh!") have variations in tone and pitch, like you're speaking individual words with varying emphasis. I learned today that this is called prosody, and it's a pretty cool language development milestone for us to get to see! I've really enjoyed having conversations with you these days. You seem so delighted to talk with us! (You also say babble sentences to let us know you're upset, and those aren't quite as pleasant to hear, though they are still pretty darn cute.)

Another delightful development is that you can locomote! I would not say you're crawling, exactly...rather, you are able to push yourself backwards. It's quite fun to watch: I put you on the floor on your back, and you flip over, push up onto your hands, and begin pushing with your hands. I'm not sure you're intending to go backwards, but that is the result. More than once, you've pushed yourself halfway under the coffee table before I can look down; you're quick! You also learned that you can shake your head back and forth (like you're saying "No."). I think the world must look strange to you when you do that!

...And then you scooted under the coffee table.

Papa and I took you to see an Occupational Therapist today about some potential reasons for why you cry so much. She was very helpful and gave us some tools to try out with you to see if we can help you learn to regulate your nervous system without so much help from me and Papa (more on that another day). I'm hopeful that next month, I can write about how very happy you've been.

No matter what, you're always delightful to me, my sweet Daniel. I love you more than you can ever know.

Love,
Momma