Roman - Six Months

He's seven and a half months old. I'm posting his six month update. It's clearly not getting any better. Poor Roman.

At his six month checkup with the doctor, he weighed 17 pounds, 3 ounces and was 27 inches long. So he gained a little over two pounds and had grown an inch in two months.

These are some of the things he was doing between the fifth and sixth months (they really are... I had written them all down at the time because there's no way I could remember now what he was doing a month and a half ago. I'm even looking at some of these and thinking, "Oh, I forgot he did that." This explains why people end up having multiple children... long-term memory loss):

• I was giving him oatmeal cereal once a day by about mid-month. He tried sweet potatoes at 23 weeks, then squash, carrots, peas, green beans, peaches, and all the rest that are left after that. He loved solids from the first bite. I guess that may be an advantage of waiting until they're a little older to introduce them. They're ready and there's not as much refusal because they want it and can eat it well. I still took it really slow though and only gave him a little of each food once a day just to let him taste them and make sure he wasn't going to have any reactions to them (he didn't). I wasn't enthusiastic about starting the whole solid food process because it was just something else to add to my slightly overwhelmed mental list. But it went well and by the start of the sixth month, he was eating solids 3 times a day.
• We introduced a sippy cup with water at about 22 weeks. Of course he kept trying to drown himself and nearly choked on the overflow multiple times, but hey, that's how they learn right? 
• He finally figured out how to roll from his stomach to his back (only to the right) at 23 weeks and the next week figured out both ways. We had some horrible sleep interruptions for a couple of days during this whole learning process, but once he figured it all out, his little empowered self went back to the regular routine.
• Somewhere around mid-month, he started reaching for me or for Blaine when one of us was holding him and the other approached. I like that milestone because it makes you feel really validated and you can say things like, "Yes, it's clear that you like me so much better than your daddy and want to come to me, don't you?" Just kidding. I never say that. I prefer, "Look Daddy! He's reaching for you. Hurry, take him so I can go back to stalking my friends on Facebook."
• He's still very entertained and amused by Brock. In the car, he has started peeping his head around the edge of his carseat to watch Brock, which cracks Brock up and makes him belly laugh, which makes Roman chuckle, which makes Blaine and me look at each other lovingly and think how amazing our two little sons are and how perfect our life is, and then the record scratches and Brock starts being a maniacal toddler again and Roman gets tired and starts screaming, and we're back to reality. I need to record this.
• I tried dropping the dream feed a couple of times this month, but he wakes up in the middle of the night wanting to eat if I don't do it, so I'm just keeping it for now.
• This is literally what I wrote down about the time change that month: "Time change - kill me" Clearly, it didn't go so well, and I was not a fan. We apparently survived though, so that's something. And I think it actually only took about a week to adjust, so I might have been a little overly dramatic, but I just really like my sleep.
• He got his first cold this month, which isn't too bad considering he went 6 months without getting sick.
• Sometimes he rolls around in his crib so much that he gets himself kind of jammed up in the corner so then he gets really angry and frustrated and can't solve the problem. And I'm like, "Well, screaming and crying about it isn't going to help the matter." But he hasn't learned to be reasonable yet, unfortunately, so I just have to help him roll back over.
• We introduced him to Baby Mum Mums at the end of the month, which he loved because it was something else to eat. If you are not familiar with Baby Mum Mums, they are just some kind of baby finger food that I think might have Asian origins and that are ridiculously overpriced and resemble communion wafers or thin slices of styrofoam (in taste and appearance). My favorite thing about Baby Mum Mums is the little bullet-point on the front of the box that says, "Great taste, No mess." LIES... so much lies. They're a sticky, soppy, messy mess waiting to happen. Be warned. 
  
• I noticed this month Roman has less sensitivity to sensory things than Brock did. Brock never liked to play with my hair that much and Roman likes to eat it. Roman loves to grab Piper and pet her and Brock wasn't as interested in touching her. The sunlight doesn't seem to bother Roman, and it always seemed to hurt Brock's eyes. Just interesting little things that I thought were common to all babies when Brock was little but that I see now were actually more unique to Brock.
• Last thing. He finally took a bottle from Blaine at 25 weeks. That's terrible. Poor Blaine was so frustrated and upset that Roman would never take it from him, especially because he would take it from the next door neighbor's cousin's uncle who he'd never seen before (not really, but almost), but wouldn't take one from his own dad. Not sure what that was all about because we had tried it since he was a newborn, and he just refused until this month.

And the pictures...