David at Six Months

Earlier in the month I promised six month pictures of David, and his 6-month “sick/well baby” visit today reminded me I haven’t posted those yet.

He weighed 20 lbs. 2 ozs. (75th percentile) , measured 28 inches long (80th percentile), and his head circumference was 18″ (90th percentile). Compared to our others, he has the distinction of being both the heaviest (with Carissa a close second) and the most proportional. All our kids have had large heads (mostly 95% and up), but  their weight & length were closer to the 50th percentile.

David nursed exclusively about 5-1/2 months when I started rice cereal. He still eats rice cereal/baby oatmeal for breakfast (along with a fruit) and for dinner (along with a vegetable) and lunch is a combination of fruit/veggies. Like all of our kids, he’s a good eater, but maybe (thankfully) isn’t eating as much as Carissa was. I’m hoping that was part of why she weaned herself at 8 months–preferring food over milk–and hoping that less food will keep him nursing till he’s 12 months like the older two. (The cost of formula is ridiculous! Not to mention the health benefits of breastfeeding.)

He sits in the bouncer seat to be fed, and Daniel and I were talking yesterday. “Isn’t that the seat Mara slept in for two months?”  It is. . . when she had projectile vomiting as a baby, the pediatrician recommended that she sleep in a bouncer seat. “It’s held up well through four kids.” I think that was Daniel, being nostalgic!

Another little tooth popped up this week, so he has two now.

The days of the Baby Einstein Activity Mat are behind us now. I think back to my little Mara playing on that mat, as we begin to discover her little personality for the first time. And each of our children has enjoyed it. . . Oh, I’m hopelessly sentimental.

Now that David is mobile, the jumparoo feels to him more like solitary confinement than playtime! I still have it out–sometimes I need him to be in it!

He’s rolling, sitting, crawling. . . and since I haven’t babyproofed the house this time around, he’s handling that for me. 😉 He is our earliest crawler.  No longer doing the “rock-and-dive scooch,” he is seriously crawling where ever he wants to go. Yesterday he was at the stairs, and he reached up, put both hands on the bottom step and started bouncing up and down with a huge grin on his face. Oh, boy. . . he is mobile!

Everything tickles this boy. Even when I fasten his diaper and lightly touch the sides of his tummy, he laughs and squeals his ticklish laugh. Micah takes advantage of this: he places his hand on Davey’s tummy and rocks the poor baby back and forth wildly. David loves it–laughs hysterically!

He and Micah share a room. Every morning I hear them “playing” together over the baby monitor before I wake up. Usually between 5:30 and 6, one of the boys wakes up and starts “calling” to the other one. I put “calling” in quotes, because David “calls” by saying consonant sounds–like “DAH!”–or simply by shriek-screaming at Micah, which of course is quite effective at awakening him. Micah adores little Davey. He can’t wait to play with him every morning, and many mornings when Micah wakes up first, David is ready for a nap again by breakfast.

David loves his Daddy! Whenever he hears Daniel’s voice or sees him walk in the room, David begins flapping his arms wildly and a huge smile envelops his face until Daniel picks him up. Even dinner can wait if Daddy’s here! If David is on the floor when Daddy comes home from work, he’s learned to pad over to the door like an awkward little puppy, and look up, waiting expectantly till Daniel scoops him up off the floor.

David loves to be thrown in the air. He loves to “chase” the older kids (well, he loves to be in my arms as I chase the older kids). He laughs so heartily–he so clearly wants to be one of the big kids. His motto, I say, is “No child left behind.”

He brings us–all of us–so much joy! It’s really hard to imagine that he hasn’t always been part of the family.

So here he is. . . my six-month-old!

{click on the collage to enlarge it}