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This dress from ittikid is adorable! I can totally see it with some little tiny leggings and a ponytail. Kinda makes me want to have a girl! 

[Blue Dinosaur hoodie from the Weils. We love it! Thank you!]

Things around here have been pretty great recently. Every day Maddox is more aware of the world around him. Our routine is constantly being refined. Morning nap is a given now, sometime between 10:30 am and 11:30 am. I use this time to fart around, tidy up the house, or just catch up on email and Facebook. This nap only lasts about 20 minutes, so its not a lot of time. Just enough to get things in order before he wakes up and I have no hands free. Then Maddox is generally happy until his next nap (which may or may not occur) at about 2 pm. And then the pre-evening grumpies set in. The last couple days I’ve taken to singing and dancing with him to get him through. Our current favorites are “Don’t Stop Belivin'” by Journey, and “Do-Re-Mi” from The Sound of Music. My theory on Do-Re-Mi is that he enjoys hearing the children sing. He picked out this song in particular when I played the whole soundtrack for him. He giggles and gets wide-eyed and I swoop and dance him around the living room. Its a pretty good work out for me!

Although he is happy, he requires almost constant attention these days. We read we play, we eat, we go for walks, sing, dance, talk, tummy time, mirror play etc. I think it will be fun when he can sit up on his own.
For now his big talent is reaching and grabbing. Its pretty cute. I love watching his chubby little hands. He also loves kisses all over his body. It makes him hysterical with laughter and cooing. I keep trying to video it, but everytime the camera comes out he freezes and just stares at the lens. Someday!

As I lay here in my cozy bed, I feel so much love for my dear little baby Maddox. It’s in these moments when the house is quiet and the world slows down that my love for him wells up inside of me and brings tears to my eyes. I could lay here for hours just listening to him breathe.

I am excited to watch him grow up into a little boy, then a teenager, and eventually a man. I can hardly wait! But at the same time I want it all to slow down so I can savour him and hold on to every moment. I love you Maddox!

In the middle of the night when I’m up nursing I sometimes browse the Apple iPhone App Store. A couple nights ago I bought Photo Brush. It has a pre-teen vibe to it (which I love). It comes with “stamps” – hearts, paw prints, snowflakes, stars etc. that can be manipulated. Its about all my brain can handle at 4am. Well, that, and Solebon Solitare. 😎

The vaccinations went better than can be expected with a baby awake during nap time and a mom on pins and needles. They sucked, don’t get me wrong, but last time I don’t think I had really heard him cry like that. This time around I knew a little about what to expect. Also, I must say the nurse was good. She was accurate and swift. Bam, bam, bam and we were all done. The third bandaid application took about 2 or 3 seconds longer than I was hoping due to a defective paper backing, but I survived, and so did Maddox.

Pretty much as soon as we hit the car, the baby was dead asleep. He was a bit off all afternoon, but nothing too serious. Mostly Hot and Cold. He would laugh super hard and get the giggles, then the he would be complainy and fidgety.

[Brunch today at Foreign Cinema]

Later in the early evening things started to go downhill, and fast. He was totally miserable. He cried really hard for long stretches. His face was red, tears pooled in his eyes and streamed down his face, he gasped for air. We assume it was from the vaccines. It was so difficult for me, and obviously for my little baby Maddox. I just walked around with him and tried to soothe him every way I knew how. All the gasping for air eventually led to gas build up, which didn’t help matters any.

After some debate and hesitation (on my part), we eventually gave him baby Tylonol at 7:15p. Within 10 min he was totally quiet and calm. He fell asleep shortly after in my arms. For fear of waking him, I just held him for a couple hours while we caught up on some television (24). Then shifted him to his bed. There was some face rubbing, but he slowly relaxed and drifted off to sleep.

I’m happy to report the next morning he woke gracefully and with a smile – back to his normal self. I love you baby!

[Brunch today at Foreign Cinema]

I was anxious about today’s visit since the weekend. I feel so badly when they have to poke and prod my baby. Maddox was already a little cranky today because the appointment was smack dab in the middle of his morning nap time. Back when we made the appointment he wasn’t on any sort of schedule yet. Now we know better, and his 6 month check-up is before his nap time. He was a trooper today, none the less.

This time, I remembered to write out a list of all the things I wanted to ask the pediatrician.

Freezing, thawing breast milk
Face scratching
Teething & when to use Tylonol
Solid Foods
Boogie extraction

I have several bottles worth of breast milk frozen. Last week or so I decided to pull the oldest one out and thaw it to see how the baby liked it. I thawed it slowly in cool water. It ended up smelling fishy. We have nothing fishy in the freezer, so something happened during the freezing or thawing process. I thought that maybe it was just old, so I thawed the most recent bag. It too was fishy smelling. They didn’t smell sour or rancid like bad milk, but they did have some sort of funk going on. We figured it was probably not bad, but instead of chancing it, I just tossed both. Today the pediatrician said that it was most likely not bad, and if the baby takes it, then its fine. She said the baby won’t drink bad milk. That is kind of what we figured, but I’ve only got one baby and lots of milk. Better be safe than sick.

Face Scratching – part of life. Deal with it and try to minimize it.

Teething & Tylenol – she advises against Tylonol until the discomfort becomes fairly bad. Start with cold teethers for numbing. Oragel #1 doesn’t work.

Solid Foods – wait until 6 months. or 5 1/2 mo. with total head control. Rice cereal with breast milk.

Boogie Extraction – she squirted saline water up each of his nostrils until he blew it out. The GIANT sticky boogie flew out and stuck to his porcupine onsie. It looked uncomfortable, but very effective. She sent us home with a couple more saline sticks for future baby torture.

Stats:
Weight 18lb 14.3 oz (100 %)
Height 25 3/8 in (75 %)
Head Cir 16 in (41 1/2 cm) (25 %)

We knew we had a big baby, but holy cow! His weight was off the charts! When pressed to give me a percentile number she said 100. Crazy.

Did I mention he was 100th Percentile for Weight???! OMG.

We had a little dinner party at Rob’s house this past weekend.
The menu: Homemade, hand-cut pasta with Braised Chicken, lacinato kale and wild mushrooms. Apple Pie

Every week now Maddox is changing and growing more into a little boy. Recently added to his repertoire are grabbing, laughing out loud, holding toys, putting things in his mouth, and being distracted while nursing.

The behaviors begin slowly, then all of a sudden something clicks and he does it all the time. Like grabbing. Only recently did he start reaching for things and sort of, kind of, holding them (if you helped get his fingers around the toy), but he didn’t seem to understand what he was doing. At the early stages of reaching he wouldn’t even open his fist, just sort of hit the intended object. Now, only a week later he is reaching for, and picking up his plastic ring toys [Thanks Juniper!], and whapping them around. He is also more deliberate when hitting the bears on his chair.

Yesterday in the car he accidently dropped/threw his rings. He started complaining (and loudly). Eventually I figured out what the problem was, and handed him a new toy (since I was driving and could not reach the rings from under my seat). He was again happy. To me, that was a milestone! Him enjoying a toy, and noticing when he no longer had it, and wanting it back. It was him being aware of his surroundings. My little worm baby is officially gone. I love where Maddox is at now, but I already miss him being a little baby. They really do grow up so fast!

He is a very distracted nurser theses days. Like many things to come, it is both funny and annoying at the same time. He stares at my new CC Skye necklace, tugs at my shirt, kicks his legs, and looks at me and giggles. Every distraction results in him un-latching. Gotta say my nipples are really taking a beating! but whatever…

Today Maddox was in a great mood and full of energy. He likes to sit. A lot.
It’s pretty much his favorite thing to do. He likes to be pulled up by his hands into the sitting position. Now he’ll sort of reach out and grab on to my fingers when I hold them out for him, then he immediately tries to sit up. When lying on his back or in his car seat he leans forward pulling himself up from his chest and his neck and head. He doesn’t get very far on his own, but he works really hard at it and will be a great sitter some day. At this stage he is considered a “pre-sitter”.

It was funny the first time several weeks ago when he first tried to sit up in his car seat. He and I were driving, and I looked back in the mirror and saw him slunched over and crooked in his seat. I thought “uh-oh, the baby fell over”, and I reached back and tried to push his body up in his seat. I was met with resistance! I soon realized he was doing it on purpose and using his tiny little muscles to try to sit up!

These photos were from today when we were reading books. I had him sort of sitting up with a pillow on the far side in case he started to teeter over. I like to be able to see his facial expressions when I read to him, so now I have him sit next to me instead of on me. It’s difficult to tell sometimes if he is excited or totally over stimulated and cranky. Turns out it is always excited, but its hard to tell without looking.

He sort of, kind of turned a page all by himself! I was very excited. 😎
He was totally into the book Peek-A Who? that our neighbor gave him when he was born. I think it will be a hit for a while to come.