Six Months

Six months ago, on May 18th, I had a pretty uncomfortable evening - my back ached no matter what position I lay in, and I was miserable and couldn't sleep. My due date was two weeks away, and I had finally hit the seriously uncomfortable part of pregnancy. In fact I made the decision to try to wrap up everything at work as quickly as possible over the next couple weeks, and leave the office a week earlier than I had planned.

Around 1 in the morning, I decided that something wasn't right, so I called the doctor, who thought it was probably nothing, but I should probably come in just in case. So I woke RB up, explaining it was probably a false alarm, but we needed to go to the hospital.

Of course, it turns out the whole time I was in labor - my water had broken that morning, and the people who tell you you'll know when you're having a contraction are lying. So the next couple hours got progressively more painful, until 3:30 when the nice man with the epidural showed up and made the whole process much much pleasanter. And 5 hours later or so, we had our little guy.

He was sweet and cuddly and wonderful 6 months ago. But since then, he has:

• Eaten for hundreds and hundreds of hours, gained around 12-13 pounds and grown 6-7 inches (I'm estimating - we'll know for sure after Monday's checkup).
• Rolled over from his back to his tummy, then realized (repeatedly) that he prefers to be on his back, but can't do anything about it.
• Grown a tooth (with the accompanying gallons of drool. Gallons. Every day. Some days I'm surprised the living room isn't submerged - good thing we've got that new sump pump in the basement.)
• Batted at objects hanging in front of him, then grabbed objects, then passed them from hand to hand. Now he picks up every toy within reach, plays with each for a while, tosses them out of reach, and then cries because he doesn't have anything to play with.
• Learned to scoot short distances, mostly in the opposite direction from where he wants to go.
• Learned to smile and grin and giggle - he's excited when we tickle him, or blow raspberries on his tummy, or whistle, and he loves to be bounced around.

Happy birthday SA - you've changed enormously, but you're still sweet and cuddly and wonderful. You're your own little person,with opinions on everything, and you'll probably change as much over the next 6 months as you have already. But don't change too quickly - for one thing, we haven't made the house safe for people who try to climb bookcases or stick their tongues into outlets. And for another, you're too charming right now to want to move through this phase quickly.