6 month update

Today the little man is 6 months old, it's so hard to believe 6 whole months have passed since he entered our lives, it really is incredible how fast time goes when you have children, they grow SO fast.

It's also time for me to start getting myself in the frame of mind for going back to work, I think my first day back will be the 30th June and hopefully I'll be going back part-time - it's just a shame we can't afford for me to be at home with Squidge full time, but that's life.

CLOTHING

I've posted a couple of big clothing haul's recently, he's grown out of his 3-6 month clothes now and is in 6-9 months, although they're quite big on him, they do fit him a lot better than the previous size - lots of the older ones stopped being able to go over his head and his legs were too long for lots of the trousers.

TEETHING

Still no teeth, but he has been sporting some pretty red cheeks, a hell of a lot of drooling and chewing his fists - and there is a lot of white up on his top sets of molars, strangely enough.  So there's definitely movement there, enough to cause him upset, but nothing actually through as yet.  This last week I've given him the Sophie the Giraffe I bought for him when I was pregnant and he's loving it!

SLEEP

Where to begin!  He was sleeping through like a trooper, until the 4 month sleep regression hit... I've actually blogged about it so you can read that here if you want to read more detail about it.  But basically, he wakes between 2-15 times a night - with the hubby and I each getting up on average 4 times a night each just to put his dummy back in.  The health visitor suggested weaning him off his dummy, however since he's teething she thought that would probably be a bad idea as he might need to soothe on it.  She also suggested at his 4pm food feed, to give him more, so a dessert too, to help fill him up. Then at his last feed (about 6:30) give him some porridge as it will help him to sleep. We've been trying that and I think it probably has helped, since then we've had 2 nights of him sleeping right through, most nights he's waking up, but more like 5 or 6 times, instead of 8/10 - so some improvement.

He's also started sleeping on his side, I'd say at least 50% of his night is spent on his side now and yesterday morning he even woke us up because he was on his tummy :)

FEEDING & WEANING

At the last update, we'd been weaning him very slowly mostly on just baby rice, but since then we've stepped it up and have been introducing him to meat, fish, different flavours from vegetables and fruit to textures and small lumps.  

He's done really well and we're realising he really really likes lots of flavour - so potato, carrot things like that he absolutely despises by themselves - however, mix them together with parsnip and chicken and he LOVES it!  We add some of his milk to the food to help - it makes it less thick and adds a familiar flavour he likes.  Today he had fish (cod) with broccoli, carrot and potato (mashed not blended) and he devoured it - the fish was still a bit flaky which didn't put him off too.  He's even started chomping in readiness to chew - it's very cute, and VERY funny :)  I've been loving making up proper food for him too, and seeing what he likes and dislikes. 

Unfortunately we have uncovered a food allergy too - I didn't realise until a newsletter/email popped through from 'What to Expect' on foods to avoid feeding your baby - it mentioned Strawberries, and how they can cause allergies, especially if there's a food allergy history in the family, which there is thanks to me (I'm allergic to banana, and intolerant to things like eggs, pineapple, avocado etc).  He developed a nasty rash all over his chest and tummy - it went within a couple of days, but it started after I gave him some fresh strawberry, and then he had it again and the rash got worse.  I've cut strawberry (in any form) out of his diet and he's been fine since, so I'm pretty sure that's what it was.

PROGRESS MILESTONES

By 6 months he should be able to do things like turn towards sounds, rolling over in both directions, reaches for objects and mouths them etc and in fairness, he's doing all of that.  For rolling over, it all happened at once.  About 4 weeks ago he rolled over for the first time, then a couple of days later he did it twice, and then for about 2 weeks he didn't do it again.  Then about a week or so ago I put him on his play mat and he rolled straight over, and every time I rolled him back, he rolled straight onto his tummy again (then screamed down the place as he hates tummy time and couldn't roll back).  A few days ago, he managed to roll himself back and he's done it quite a few times since but he's not as competent with it as he is rolling onto his tummy.

He's also done a tiny bit of commando crawling - he's tried really really hard to crawl and to get to a couple of toys when he's been on his tummy, he's pulled himself a long using his elbows, very cute and scary at the same time!

We've also ditched the play gym as it's just too restrictive with him rolling over, and instead he has a big Taf Toys play mat that's 1.5 metres wide by 1 m.  We have his toys on different sides of it for him to roll to - the mat is great, it has different colours, some squares have squeaks and noises they make, and one has a mirror on - he loves to look at himself in this when he's on his tummy :)  It's really nicely padded too.

PHYSIO

While he still as a wonky head, it's definitely getting better, which is great.  He had another check up with the physio about 3 weeks ago - they were happy that he's turning his head to the left more easily and that his wonky head is now 'mild', but they wanted to see him rolling over more - so we're off back there on the 15th April for what should be a final check-up - huzzah!

OTHER BITS

• No first word yet - but he has started babbling by saying 'ba ba ba ba ba' so it's only a matter of time before he says 'ma ma' or 'da da' - it's felt like he's been on the cusp of saying 'hello' for ages too - you can really hear him trying to say it
• He's obsessed with pulling my hair, touching my face and grabbing the cat's fur - she's been great so far and hasn't retaliated
• We're going through bibs like there's no tomorrow!
• The pampers nappies we switched to (from Aldi) have been amazing, not one leak of wee-wee since we changed, whereas with Aldi we were needing multiple daily changes of clothes thanks to wee-wee leaks
• He's pretty much grown out of his Shnuggle bath - it's up to 6 months and he barely fits in it now :/  So now we're looking for another solution - both hubby and I have bad backs etc so can't be bending down, so we'll see what we find

I've also started creating the paintings for his nursery, the ones I wanted to get done when I was still pregnant! Useless I know! Well, the Totoro one is nearly finished - I just need to add a bit to the bottom right and it'll be ready to hang.

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