Happy Half Birthday - 6 Months of Fun!

6 Month Update - Development & Milestones

I've said it and I will say it again, I can't believe it has been 6 months already since our sweet baby was born. 1/2 of a year! It went by so, so fast.

Asher is so much more lively and interactive now than ever before. He is happy all day and lets us know with a huge, as John would say, "Kool-Aid grin" that stretched from ear to ear. He laughs, he plays, he is curious... and he is so smart!

SIGN LANGUAGE UPDATE - 6 Months

Asher is now signing:

Dog

Milk

Up

Eat

More

We have seen glimpses of...

Cereal

Mama

Dada

Water

He gave up on:

Banana 

Carrot

I have now introduced these new signs:

Diaper

Change

Sleep

Sleep Clothes aka Pajamas

Train

Airplane

Car

Ball

Bath

Pacifier/Binky

Play

SIGNING IN USE...

The other night, I had to change Asher's diaper after having already put him to bed. While on the changing pad, he signed "milk". I wouldn't have otherwise given him any since he had just eaten, but once I did he ate the whole thing! This is just amazing to me and really solidifies our desire to continue with baby signing.

Here's a video of our little signer showing off his skills signing "dog" when he sees and hears the pugs during his pictures this morning...

MILESTONES @ 6 MONTHS

• Asher can now sit without using his hands for support (still topples over after a minute or so).
• Crawling "inchworm" style, still, only he is now making more progress in terms of moving across the floor. He can't yet lift his belly and support himself on his hands and knees, but once he figures that out - watch out! He'll be unstoppable.
• Sounding out "brrrr", "thhh", "deh", "meh", and blowing spit bubbles. I swear I heard "mama" and "dada" tonight but it may just be wishful thinking. ;) I DID hear "eee-ooo" while he was trying to  do peek-a-boo and I'm pretty sure he wants to say "doggy" so badly!
• Can drink from a sippy cup (but loses his grip within a few seconds). Just a tiny bit of water with his "crackers" (which I then discovered "may contain milk or soy" - oops - so I made homemade ones and will share the recipe soon. They also said they contain "organic flavor"? What the heck is "organic flavor"??? I am getting crunchier by the minute...)

Half-birthday onesie from Kakabaka on Etsy.

TEETHING UPDATE

We are still on "tooth watch"! Nothing yet, but lots of crankiness in the evenings, so something must be moving around in there. We've got a close eye out for anything breaking through...

We've been giving Asher 2-3 Hyland's Homeopathic Teething Tablets in his bottles whenever he seems to be experiencing teething pain. We also picked up some BabyGanics Teething Pods which I have only had to break out once and it really seemed to have helped a lot. 

SOLID FOOD UPDATE

Asher loves solid foods! He loves them so much that he will only drink half his usual amount of milk in the mornings and is extra finicky with bottles now. I had to start giving him brown rice cereal (against my original plan) so that I could mix more milk into his solids to thicken everything up.

It's been about 2 weeks now that he has been eating brown rice cereal and over the past week or so we have seen an onset of mild eczema on his face, arms, legs, and chest. I am not sure if this is related to the rice cereal or the introduction of stage 2 baby foods (which have multiple ingredients in them) so I am going to be doing some backtracking to stage ones and hopefully I can figure out what is causing this issue. Our city has also made changes to the water recently and it smells like awful chlorine now, so maybe it could be related to that... It's so frustrating! His next doctor's appointment is just around the corner, so unless the skin issue takes a turn for the worse before then, we'll address it then.

POSTPARTUM UPDATE

My hair is still shedding like crazy - when does this stop?!?! Otherwise, things are pretty much back to normal, for the most part. Thank goodness!

Giving Suki the "stink eye". :)

Happy Half-Birthday to our ENERGETIC little jumping bean. He is so sweet and loving but he is also showing signs of never ending ENERGY! Those feet - they just go and go and go. We have our work cut out for us with this one, I think. Oh and that mischievous smile... Yes, we are in trouble. 

We love you baby Asher! 

Don't tell Daddy, but now it is time to start planning your 1-year birthday...

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Baby Feeding Schedule - 4 Months

We are truly blessed to have a baby who sleeps 12-13 hours straight throughout the night at 4 months old. Being exclusively formula fed may be a contributing factor; but even so, I have been told time and time again just how incredibly lucky we are. (Knock on wood.)

I love waking up to the rustling sound of Asher having his morning stretch in his co-cleeper then looking over to see his his freshly awoken smile illuminated by the early morning light. His eyes are always directed straight at me as if to say, "Good morning, Mommy! Let's have breakfast, shall we?" Sometimes it's more of a, "Feed me NOW or someone is going to get hurt!!!" Even then, I can't complain since it's always after at least a 12 hour stretch of sleep for him and 6-8 hours or so for me. (Both John and I have a bad habit of going to bed late. In our defense, "me time" can be just as important as sleep!)

It's amazing to have such a sound sleeper, however, this also can make it difficult to make sure Asher gets enough to eat throughout the day without having some sort of a nap and/or feeding schedule in place. Mostly, it is becoming more difficult due to our current 'Super-Spitter-Upper' situation. One hopeful solution to lessening the outpour of spit-up may be allowing him smaller portions, more often, like when he was younger. Except now, we have to squeeze that into the 11-12 hour time frame that he is awake sans the 2-3 hours of nap time strewn throughout the day! We're averaging at about 22-24 oz of formula per day right now, but I think that he could definitely eat more if we plan it right with a feeding schedule. According to the formula serving chart, we should be at about 30-35 oz a day between 3-6 months. He is gaining weight steadily, thriving and growing and I know some babies need more than others... but I at least want to give Asher the opportunity to eat as much as he may need just in case he isn't getting quite enough.

So, I think a flexible feeding and nap schedule will be a nice addition to our chaotic day to day. Here's what I'm thinking (times approximate and feeding amounts to fit the pattern we've been seeing with what he can normally handle without too much spit-up):

BOTTLE & NAP SCHEDULE - 4 MONTHS

8:00am - 1st bottle 5-6 oz
10:00am - 2nd bottle 2-4 oz
10:30 - nap (45 min - 2 hour)
12:30 - 3rd bottle 5-6 oz
3:30 - 4th bottle 2-4 oz
4:30 - nap (45 min - 1.5 hour)
5:30 - 5th bottle 4-6 oz
7:00 - bath
7:30 - 6th and last bottle 4-6 oz
8:00pm - bedtime!

On any given day he can eat between 22 and 32 ounces with this feeding schedule depending on how hungry he is. Most likely it will be closer to 25 for awhile. But at least we'll be offering him more if he wants it! This is sort of how it goes now - just usually without the pre-morning nap bottle. I think this schedule will help us get just enough more in each day. Sometimes he falls asleep during that last bottle, too, only getting in 2 ounces if we're lucky.

The nap times and lengths tend to vary, especially on days that we are not at home, whether I have him with me to work at the shop or if we are out and about for any other reason. So this is definitely meant to be a SOFT schedule with a lot of flexibility, but at least it gives us a general guideline to work with. I say us, but I guess I mostly mean me.

For now, we'll see how this goes. I know that 4 months is the peak age of spit-up amount and occurrences, but if we can reduce it as much as possible while also ensuring this little guy is getting his fill, that will help save my sanity on laundry days!

Here are more fun pictures from our 4 month photo shoot in his 4 month onesie.

Adore!

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