Dear Ash,
You’re SIX MONTHS OLD! That’s half a year!! HAPPY HALF-BIRTHDAY! Let’s party! And we did!
This month has flown by. You and I have worked ourselves into a little schedule and the hours of the days of the weeks just slip by, and I have a hard time remembering any of it. I was thinking of all the things we did in the past week for example, and there was the trip to the pool with Ambera, the baby massage class, a long walk with our friend Ute and Sofia, and I have difficulty remembering which event happened on which day. Some moms would likely get annoyed at the lack of variety in the activities, but I still say I’ve never smiled or laughed so much in my entire life.
Someone said to me that they thought it must be a strange life to spend all day with someone who doesn’t talk. I hadn’t even thought of it that way before, actually. You and I communicate so well that I know what you want and how you want it. It doesn’t matter that your way of speaking is in grunts, moans, wails and giddy noises.
I think the biggest accomplishment this month was Natural Infant Hygiene/Elimination Communication. I can count the number of poopy diapers I’ve changed on one hand. You’ve been great and I’m so proud of you. We sit you on the potty when you wake up in the mornings and after naps (and once at 11 when I come to bed), and you pee almost immediately. Pooping takes a little while longer, partly because that’s how your body works and partly because you’re distracted by my reflection in the mirror or by the toilet paper that’s in the toilet paper holder in the side of your potty… or by your toes, or by the back of the potty or or or. I still haven’t been able to figure out when you need to pee during the day, so we’ve kept the diapers on you, but even this as a first step is a great start. I feel like I’m meeting your needs better than I would be if I continued to watch you poop in your diapers. Plus, cleaning you up is so much easier.
Physically you’ve grown leaps and bounds this month, especially in the past week. At the beginning of the week you were able to get up on your forearms, and slowly you grew stronger, and now you’re able to get your belly off the floor and put all your weight on your hands and knees. In the past few days you’ve even started rocking back in forth, in a sort of humping motion, and I think you’ll be crawling by next Friday. Good for you! Even if it does scare me because it means that you’ll be into everything, which means that your father and I have to really start baby proofing. I’ve put plastic covers over the plug outlets already because you were insanely interested in the one above our bed for some reason. Now you don’t even notice that it exists. Good boy.
Sitting up has come quickly as well. At the beginning of the month you were very wobbly, and now you can sit on the potty or on the floor without any (or much) support (though you do fall over occasionally, but you’re really good at not letting your head hit the floor). This means that your father and I have started eating meals at the table and you sit in your high chair beside your papa and play with toys. And by play, I mean throw.
You’ve been sleeping really, really well, or maybe I’m just used to waking up every couple of hours. I still have to swaddle you (and reinforce the swaddle with a bandanna because of your super-human baby strength) because you won’t stop moving your hands, hands that are drawn to your mouth and remove your soother [YES, you still have it, even though I promised myself I'd take it away at the beginning of five months. You only use it to fall asleep, never during the day unless we're out for a long time and you miss a nap and you need to be calmed down] which means that you get frustrated and can never figure out who took the soother away (hint: it was you). Swaddling also helps (less and less, unfortunately) you from rolling over. Though, a couple of days ago I went to get you after you woke up from a nap, and even though it’d only been about a minute after I heard your initial waking up noises, you weren’t on the bed; instead you had rolled onto the floor, still tightly swaddled, and were laying between the bed and your father’s tool box. You had a look on your face like, “Oh shit! I don’t even know how this happened!” You didn’t hurt yourself though, but it did convince me that we should get some bed rails.
On Wednesday I got a call from the public health nurse about the results of the four-month questionnaire I filled out (from memory, because I filled it out a month later). She was concerned about your development. She tried not to worry me, saying that it was probably not a big deal, but she was concerned enough to make the call, right? There were a few things that she thought were odd- the fact that you didn’t “chuckle to yourself,” laugh or make any ba-ba-ba noises yet. I obsessed about that phone call all night even though it didn’t bother me initally, so I called back the next morning to talk about it. She’s going to send me another questionnaire, the six-month one, and after talking to some online mommy friends of mine, I decided not to worry- each kid develops at their own pace. After all, you cut your first two teeth at 4.5 months, which is early in comparison to other kids.
The lack of babbling, on the other hand, DID concern me. You hadn’t done it yet at all, and I was, frankly, getting tired of hearing the constant moans. We all need variety in our lives, and I was ready to hear something different. So, for the past couple of days your papa and I have been ba-ba-ba-ing and ma-ma-ma-ing to you a LOT. And hallelujah! Today while we were walking around the grocery store you started babbling out of nowhere. And you didn’t stop the entire time. Just a constant ma-ma-ma-maaa-maa-mamamamama! We are very, very proud of you!!
A few funny things: you love looking and touching my tongue ring. You’ll stare at it while I’m speaking to you, and you reach out for it when I stick out my tongue to try to satisfy your curiosity.
Last night when we were in the bath, you got your duck stuck in your mouth a couple of times. It came out with a “POP!”
Something that always makes you smile like crazy and sometimes laugh is when we say “peeeeee shiiiivers!” and jiggle you back and forth. You do get pee shivers, and until I mentioned them to your papa, I didn’t even know they existed!
You’re still fucking cute. And what’s even better, is that you continue to get better.
As always, I love you. Your father put this video together in the past couple of days. It’s a very poetic version of the first time we met you. He did a wonderful job.
Love,
Mama
PS. Please stop with the scratching. It’s weird and annoying.
