6 months

Palmer is 6 months old today! He is a busy body who loves his teething toys and standing with support. We try and keep a bib on him to curb the drool and have just started cloth diapering (which I am having a lot of fun with so far!) He is still nursing and we are occasionally giving him rice or oatmeal cereal during the day. We go to the doctor on Monday for his well-check and immunizations so depending on what the doc says, we may start fruit and veggie purees soon. I'm not in a big hurry since nursing is just so convenient. . . and there aren't any dishes to wash!

Palmer loves when you make "mamama" or "quack" noises to him and is easily entranced by a dangling sheer Kindermusik scarf. We recently bought him a walker that he can sit up and play in like his exersaucer, but it is portable from room to room. Other new developments include a desire to grab or quickly snatch things on the dinner table, and a new ability to bang and/or fling his toys. We are working on him sitting up since that's one of the "requirements" for the McKinney Parks & Rec swim lessons I've already signed him up for :)

I think Palmer's increasing attachment to me and other people is making him wake up at night. He's been waking between 2 and SEVEN times over the past week and hasn't improved on the nights he has no cereal (so gas isn't the trouble). He wails in a very sad way and I try to give him the pacifier, but he either knocks it out with his hands or as soon as I leave the nursery he starts crying again so it falls out. Picking him up stops the crying on a dime, so I think he's having some separation anxiety when he wakes up by himself in the crib. I tried to practice some tough love this morning and the poor thing cried from 4:30 to 5:30. I went in every 5 minutes to soothe him, but most of the time as soon as I would turn my back to leave he would let out a shriek. (Worse than that though is when you get all the way back in bed and he's completely quiet. . .you think he's asleep! finally! but then. . . like the villain in a scary movie who isn't actually dead, there he goes again with the crying.)

If you've been around a crying baby for any length of time- it's anxiety producing! Those 5 minute waits seem to last forever, but I didn't want to go in more often since it seemed when he saw me and then I left he ended up even more upset. To add to the hormonal anxiety, I just feel bad for my sweet boy and want him to be happy, content, and drift peacefully off to sleep. The good thing is, I know that this "sleep learning" we did a couple months back worked really well. We just have to start being disciplined about it again so hopefully Palmer (and Tyler and I) can be snoozing soundly in just a few days.

Here he is wearing his itti bitti tutto one-size diaper in Aqua Essence! It has 3 different soakers that can be used in a few different combinations and attach according to color coded snaps. When I take them out to put in the diaper laundry bag I can tell he definitely needs all 3 soakers at once! Sunday he wore this diaper from wake-time through his first nap and that was too long (we had a little leak in his crib). Now I put a clean diaper on him when he wakes up and again right before his first nap since he tends to wet so much at that time of day. I have more to tell you about the itti bitti, his bumGenius Elemental, and some prefold/hemp combos I've tried, but I think he's going to be up from his nap any minute now.