Six months old!

April 9-15, 2012

What a cute little man!

Caleb rolls and scoots from toy to toy so quickly! He will be so focused on playing with a toy and then all of the sudden, I look at him and he is pressing all of the keys on my laptop or trying to pull the cord out of the wall or trying to chew on the cord. I'm in trouble once he figures out how to crawl, he is already so fast! He rolls around in his sleep too and wakes himself up when he runs in to the bars of the crib. I didn't make/get bumper pads because of all of the warnings about SIDS but now I think I need to get some because he keeps hitting his head on the crib.

A picture from about a month ago, but Caleb still does this. He rolls over to the quilt draped on the crib and plays with it. How can he resist all of the bright colors?!

Another picture from a month ago... we roll up a blanket and lay it around him because he likes to nuzzle his face into it at night. He has started to unroll it and cover his face up.

He sits up really well when he wants to. He can stay up for a few minutes with some wobbling but without tipping over unless he decides he wants to lay down while chewing on his toy. My favorite is when he is sitting up while skyping with the grandparents and then he all of the sudden lunges forward on to the laptop! I have to have my arms in ready position to catch him so he doesn't break it or hurt himself.

Here he is playing peek-a-boo with Grammy on Skype

Then he looks away from Skype and gives Mom a big smile!

Caleb is a really good "solid" eater now! He downed three ice cubes worth of sweet potato, avocado and apple one day at dinner. It almost all went in his mouth and he was even licking it off of his lips and was ready to eat more if I would let him. I nursed him to top him off because I was worried how his little digestive system would handle that much food at once. I think he's going through a growth spurt! That, and he is back to waking up every 3 hours at night to eat. 

I had told some of my friends I would be on vacation but didn't even think about telling our neighbors, I didn't think any of them would even notice I was gone. Saturday we were working in the yard and the older man who lives next door came over and said that he had begun to worry about me. He said, "I started to think that something happened to you like that woman from Utah whose husband took her camping..." (Susan Powell) I guess I'll let him know next time I go out of town!

This is Caleb asleep on the airplane.

My baby is half a year old! For his 6 month doctor's appointment we went to a different pediatrician and she is great! She is a mom of twins, she listened to my questions and answered them before she did the normal parts of the exam. She treated us as individuals instead of just cookie-cutter approaching us.

Caleb is 27.75" long (89%), 17 lb 7.5 oz (50%) and head circumference of        (99%). No wonder it has taken him a while to enjoy being on his stomach... with a head that size, it takes a lot of strength! When the doctor talked to us about Caleb's cow protein allergy, she asked how I was doing, which I really appreciated. I have a lot of questions and have been trying to just take care of them on my own.

Having just come back from Utah, where I wasn't at home and not in control as much as to what and when I ate, I had lost 5 more pounds and weighed less than I have since 7th or 8th grade. (I was still eating three meals a day, just not getting as many snacks in between as I needed.) I told that I keep getting sick and don't have the energy to exercise like I used to. I tried to go on a run while I was in Utah and couldn't make it more than a mile before I "hit the wall" (depleted my glycogen stores) which I had only had happen to me once in my life before having a baby and that was toward the end of an Olympic Triathlon.

She talked to me about gaining some weight back (which I had been trying to do) and putting Caleb on a multi-vitamin (it smells and tastes and looks like poop). I was also very grateful she didn't try to convince me to stop breastfeeding him or supplement him with formula.

She said that every couple of months I need to try eating some dairy to see if Caleb has outgrown the allergy yet. Most babies outgrow this allergy by 1 year old but are usually on a special formula, so their parents don't bother testing them to see at what point they have outgrown it. She said in my case, where I should not be off of dairy any longer than I have to, to start eating it again as soon as I can.

After a week of eating a lot, I was able to go on a three mile run today! I know I shouldn't complain about weight loss when most people are concerned with weight gain, but eating enough isn't easy or delicious when I can't eat all of the yummy fatty foods I would like... I'm getting sick of my snack foods that I've been eating every day, even Oreos!

Saturday was the day we celebrated our birthdays... Allen and I just celebrate in the middle of our birthdays (April 2 and 28th) but this year we didn't have cake since Caleb and I can't eat it. Instead of getting presents for one another, we went to the mall and each bought a new pair of jeans. Neither of us fit in to our old jeans. I get so excited when I get new clothes that I just want to wear them all of the time! I wore them around our house all Sunday after church.

Here are pictures from my ipod that I forgot to put in the last post about Utah: