Ben: 6 months

Can you believe the little guy is halfway to a year already?

Ben has been rolling around like crazy. He can roll all the way across the room, and he rolls towards Colin's toys he sees on the floor.

He is also beginning to sit up, although we stay pretty close to him because he topples over eventually.

Ben is on a reverse cycle schedule, and has been since I went back to work in March. He doesn't drink much milk all day at daycare, and nurses here and there when he's around me, and then gets up about 2 times a night. This is much different than when I was on maternity leave and he'd sleep all night long some nights. Add in the slow teething process (we know they're in there somewhere!) and it has been exhausting. But never fear! I'm done with work now for the summer and I'm trying to reverse his reverse cycle. My game plan is to try to nurse him every 2 hours during the day so hopefully he gets all the calories he needs during waking hours and won't need them at night. We may need to add in a little middle-of-the-night Ferber if filling him up during the day doesn't work. I'm a fan of Ferber's results, but I hate the process. Luckily he usually goes down for the night pretty easily.

Speaking of calories, we started Ben on solids about a week and a half ago. We're doing the baby lead weaning approach (aka baby self feeding). So instead of rice cereal and purees, we give him the real stuff in big chunks. He started with a banana. I cut a 2-3" chunk off a banana, and then split it into the thirds bananas naturally break into. This gives Ben 3 "banana sticks" to gnaw on. It depends on the day and his hunger and interest, but some days he'll eat just a few bites while others he eats almost all of it! We also gave him some avocado. Avocado is pretty mushy on its own and hard to grab, even for an adept adult. Ben's first experience with it wasn't so awesome. As evidenced by this face:

So I put it in a mesh feeder and Ben loves it that way! He puts the mesh bag in his mouth, and pulls it out while squeezing avocado out the little holes with his gums.

We're going to give him avocados and bananas a few more days, and then we'll add sweet potatoes into the mix.

Just yesterday Ben got his first swimming experience in our friends' pool and loved it! Whenever I'd stop moving him around, he'd yell at me to keep moving. He also got to float a little bit.

I expect that there will be a lot more swimming this summer so I'm glad Ben likes the water so much!

His personality is still easygoing. He goes with the flow for the most part, and if he gets fussy, he's easy to make happy again. He likes Colin, swinging outside, baths, stroller rides, Sophie the Giraffe, laughing, and hearing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star when he's tired.

Another month down, another month ahead to learn and grow! I'm just so happy that I can spend more time with Ben for his 6th month. It's the best part of my job.