Jon and Amber

We did some major housecleaning last weekend. Jeremy didn’t want to be left alone in a playpen, and I couldn’t let him help me clean the bathrooms, so he rode along with Jon to help with picking up and vaccuming.

Taken Oct 2008, 6 months old

I should’ve mentioned this a couple days ago but forgot until now when Jon reminded me.

Jeremy had been sleeping well every night, usually 6-7 hours at the beginning of the night with one late-late feeding (sometimes it was just an early-early morning feeding!), but then last week and the week before he went through what I guess you’d call a sleep regression. He was awake every 2 hours and I was becoming a zombie from lack of sleep. I figured it was because he was getting close to some big milestones, and was probably still dealing with some teething pain which has been going on for about 4 months straight now.

Well Sunday night, he finally slept soundly again for 7½ hours straight! It was wonderful, for ALL of us. On Monday afternoon, one of the ladies at daycare said she thought she had seen a little white on his lower gums. We took a closer look that night and she was right! His first tooth has finally broken through to the surface! It’s just a little line right now, but if you let him bite down on your finger you can definitely feel it in there - it’s one sharp little fang! (I’m just glad he’s got a good latch so I don’t notice it when he’s nursing, HAHA!)

Jeremy has started crawling today. Not too much, but enough that I would for sure call it crawling. He can move himself forward with arms and legs on the carpet a few inches at a time. He mostly does it to try to get something really close in front of him, so we have been trying to get him encouraged that way. He has been really wiggly/antsy lately.

Last year was the first year that there were no trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood, since all the neighbor kids are now teenagers who are more interested in going to parties. So this year, we dressed Jeremy up to go visit the neighbors, but we said “No Tricks, No Treats - we’re just here to show off a little!”

He had two costumes this year - one to wear all day at daycare (Batman), and one to wear out in the neighborhood (Baby Bee).

I wouldn’t believe this myself if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes, but Jeremy has figured out how to pull himself up to a stand already. Here’s video proof:

I don’t think he knows that it is abnormally early for him to be doing this kind of stuff, but babies don’t know what calendars are, so I guess we’ll have to forgive him!

The full 3-minute video with Jeremy standing up (several times!) is also available here on YouTube.

Today Jeremy is 6 months old.  YAY!

We are following the WHO guidelines of exclusively breastfeeding for the first 6 months (no cereal, juice, or other foods), and since Jeremy turns 6 months old this week and is showing all the signs of readiness for solids, we figured we’re close enough right now and decided not to wait until Friday… besides, he can’t really read a calendar anyway! (Here’s some more info about delaying solids, for anyone interested.)

A few days ago he got to taste a Honeycrisp apple that I was eating. He didn’t get to eat any, he just sucked and gnawed on it, but he clearly enjoyed it as you can see:

Then tonight, we used the baby food grinder to mush up some acorn squash which we mixed with a little breastmilk. He LOVED it.

We only made a little bit at first, and when he wanted more I decided to skip the milk and just mush up the squash. As it turns out, he doesn’t need his food to be soupy! He had no problem with the thicker texture at all, ate a lot and really loved it.

Here are a couple pictures of Jeremy eating the squash tonight. He stayed surprisingly neat and clean (relatively speaking, and considering this was his first time)! Good thing, too, since we forgot to put a bib on him.