Nathan in his first Halloween costume. We went to the zoo on Sunday with some friends and their babies, so Nathan got to dress up.

Nathan had his 6 month pediatrician appointment today. He was a trooper with his vaccinations and we get to start yellow and orange veggies! Now it gets really fun.
The stats:
18 lbs 4 oz (50th percentile)
25 1/2 inches long (25th percentile)
17 inch head circumference (btwn 25th & 50th percentile)

And it’s amazing how much he’s changed!

One Month

Three Months

Six Months

Nathan has always liked mirrors, they are guaranteed to pull a smile out of him. But last night I sat him up in front of the elephant mirror we have and all of a sudden he started cracking up. For over 5 minutes he was just watching himself in the mirror, flapping his arms up and down, and laughing hysterically.

Its pretty cool how good he’s getting at entertaining himself and playing independently. It does mean our little baby is growing up though. Its a bittersweet thing, but I’ll try not to whine about it too much!

Other cute and new things Nathan is doing:

• Lots of laughing, especially when he’s tickled under his arms
• He is getting more into playing with the toys on his jumper and has figured out how to make stuff spin around.
• He has really noticed Fen now and reaches for him a lot. Fen is really good with Nathan and stays calm when he’s nearby, even letting him pet his face. It’s very sweet.
• Loves to sit upright and will try to pull himself upward if you lay him back in a reclined position.
• Loves to stand up. He has such strong legs and can hold on to us or the back of the couch and keep himself up for a few minutes.

Nathan is also looking very grown up lately and less like our squishy little 6 lb baby. And he’s doing so many new things all the time. Gary pointed out last night that just within a week he went from sitting up for just a couple minutes at a time, to spending 40 minutes sitting and playing at daycare yesterday; and from pushing all the cereal out of his mouth and not usually finishing a couple teaspoons of it, to loving it and gobbling it up and eating more and more each time.

I’m sure there are more things he’s doing that I’m forgetting about right now, but I’ll add them if I think of them.

Added October 22, 2007:
Nathan is reaching and grabbing and picking up everything he can, from toys on the floor to jewelry to writing on a shirt. He has also figured out that some toys make noises so he will shake a lot of the smaller stuff he picks up. He also loves faces and putting his hands in your mouth.

We took a field trip to a pumpkin farm this past weekend. Nathan slept through most of the trip and at first I was dissapointed but at his age he is probably just as fascinated by our backyard He woke up as we were getting ready to leave so we were able to snap a few photos. I think this will be a really fun trip next year when he can really enjoy the petting zoo, hayride and big pumpkins.

Nathan is doing better and better with sitting up. He loves it and isn’t falling over much anymore. When he gets tired from sitting too long he’ll slump forward but if we didn’t put him on his back at that point I think he’d prefer to stay up! Playtime is a lot of fun now because we can put toys in front of him and he gets to pick things up and bang on them.

Nathan’s also doing really well with eating. He hardly pushes the cereal out with his tongue anymore and just gobbles the up the food. He also reaches for the spoon and opens up his mouth to get more, and if you aren’t quick enough, he sticks his fingers in his mouth so he can suck the cereal off of them. This week we started having daycare give him some cereal during the day so he’s getting it more often. We have his 6 month check up in a couple weeks and Im guessing after that we’ll start introducing oatmeal and veggies.

It seems that Nathan might just be skipping the whole “rolling over” thing. Yes he’s rolled over a few times, at day care and for Danielle, but he is far from consistent in this skill. I think that when he does it, it is more of a happy accident than something he really intended to do. But, he has moved on to sitting up. Over the last week or so he’s gone from kind of being able to sit up and hold himself up for a few seconds to full on sitting. If there’s a toy in front of him he can now sit there and play with it for a couple of minutes before falling over. In fact last night he was just sitting on the floor, and not playing, just sitting and looking around. He even managed to catch himself at one point when falling over. Granted seconds later he fell over, but hey it’s a start.

In addition to sitting, he’s started scooting himself across the floor. Our technique for trying to get him to roll over is to put him on his tummy and then sit behind him so he will have to look over his shoulder to see us and then hopefully he’ll roll himself over. Unfortunately, he’ll have none of that. When we put him on his tummy now and sit behind him he simply rotates himself around until he’s facing us and then scoots on over. He’s not really crawling yet, he’s more acting like an inchworm, getting his butt up in the air and pushing himself along the floor on his face. It’s fun to watch.

We started giving Nathan cereal last week. He seemed pretty confused by it at first and just pushed it all out with his tongue, but he seems to be starting to get the hang of it…he’s still pushing a lot of it out, but at least some of it is making it into his stomach now.

This is from the first time we fed him cereal. He looks very wary of it, doesn’t he?

This was the second time we gave him cereal, but his first time in the big highchair!

There are more pictures here

Nathan and I took our first drive up to Ithaca a couple weekends ago for the wedding of my friend Jocelyn. For some reason I wasn’t too nervous about the trip, though I was a little worried about how breastfeeding him on the road would go, and hoped he’d sleep most of the time. Nathan didn’t disappoint! He slept the majority of the trip both there and back, and we only had to stop once each time for him to eat. Nathan got really tired of the car seat during the last 40 minutes on the drive home and pretty much cried that entire time, but otherwise he was great.

On the way down we met up with my friend Mariah at a rest top. She was also traveling to the wedding from Baltimore, with her daughter Olive and her husband. I’m so glad she was there for that first stop because it helped me feel comfortable nursing in that environment. It was a beautiful day and we sat on a picnic table in the sun nursing our babies. What a wonderful and liberating experience that was for me!

I was really happy that my mom got to see Nathan since she lives kind of far away and hadn’t seen him in two months. He’s changed so much since then and it was exciting to show off some of the new stuff he’s doing. It was a quick and busy trip, but I hope she got her fix

The wedding was simple and beautiful. It was held in a park, and the ceremony was on a rock ledge next to a waterfall. Jocelyn has been following our website and all the updates, so I was really glad that she and Nathan finally got to meet. He did really well at the wedding despite the heat and noise. He flirted and smiled at everyone, and even endured getting passed around quite a bit.

I’ve said before that it’s becoming harder to be out and about and still keep Nathan to any sort of schedule. I knew there was very little chance of keeping to one during the weekend but hoped for the best. Even though Nathan was definitely overtired at certain points, he was a good sport and seemed to really love all the new stuff he could soak in.

There are some pictures from the weekend in the September Photo Album and pictures from the wedding here