MMMM

We're not sure he's happy being on video. Which is a shame, if true, because he's so cute!!

This isn't his most enthusiastic eating, but it's good to get his "mmmmm"s recorded.

Noah Laughing

What makes him laugh the most is being tossed in the air! This was a close second and easier to get on the Flip.

Happy 6th. month, Noah Maxx!

Wow! Our boy just turned six months old and he's cuter and funnier than ever! Yes, I know that I'm being prejudiced, but if you can spend some time with him, you'd feel the same way too!

Noah Maxx has been nothing but a pleasure to be around, and it really sucks for me to be at work for most of the day, not being able to play with him and even getting to change his poopy diapers!

I know that most parents cannot wait to have their children grow up, but I for one am enjoying Noah Maxx's babyhood! It's really true when they say that children do grow up fast! Already he is starting to look more and more like a toddler and less and less like a baby! Could it be the extra week that he spent in my belly?

I wish that you could share in the chocolate cake that your other mom made, but I am sure that by the time that you could, she'll make you another one for you to enjoy! Speaking of food, I cannot wait until your teeth come in so we could share! All those months of talking to him about what I've had for meals while I was pregnant with you sure has made their impacts!

He loves being in the kitchen, not only to eat but to look out the backyard. He also loves being tossed in the air and laughs heartily when we'd pretend to dance! The concentration on his face when he'd watch us cooking on the stove just tells us that he's taking notes for when it's time for him start cooking!

I hope that he'll always stay as curious and funny even when he's a grown up!

6 Months Old!

Our little Noah Maxx is six months old today. It really does seem like he's been with us for so much longer! But I'm glad that it doesn't feel like time is flying by.

While many of the big milestones are coming up in the next six months - teeth, crawling, walking - he's started to look like a little boy and not a baby. He's so long and skinny. And he's just so darn cute.

And he couldn't be a better kid. I'm so very thankful he's not a fussy kid. We spend most of his awake time chillin upstairs. He goes from one type of chair to the other to tummy time to his bouncy chair. I love watching him take in the world.

He's taken well to solids. He's had bananas, avocado, apple sauce, the purees are sweet potato, butternut squash, carrots and peaches. He loves the carrots as long as apple sauce is mixed in. We'll eventually try mixing the green beans with apple sauce because he didn't like them at all plain the first time. Next we'll add some peas to the mix.

He loves to sit in his high chair any time we're in the kitchen. He does NOT love it when we're in the kitchen without him!

While it would be nice if he'd sleep a little later most mornings, he's sleeping ten to twelve hours at night, so we can't really complain.

We feel so lucky and blessed to have him.

Past Future Present

I've been pondering for a few days just how much time I spend thinking about the past. I think about people I used to know, be close to, that are just gone now. I wonder how they're doing, what they're doing. But probably more than that, I spend a lot of time thinking about my life, the things that have happened in it and so on. It's like if I can just review it all enough, think about it all enough, I can make it all make sense, can form a coherent narrative out of it.

Then the other day I realized that's not so great. There comes a point where I need to say ok, the past is past. Be done with it. And there are things I've done that with. It would be better if I started focusing on the future.

Last night I had an amazing thought. The reason I don't focus on the future is because for so long I've been scared of it. I'm not sure when that started. I know I felt that way back when Nerdstar was in Iraq. I didn't handle it well, all the worrying. It was hard to think about the future when on any given day she could get killed. (She had a couple of close calls.) Then there was a hard transition for us when she came back. Then we moved, and moved, and moved. Even now we don't know how long we're going to stay here in the DC area.

Another big reason I didn't always like thinking about the future was that I could never be sure we'd ever have kids. And thinking that might never happen always made me so sad.

So, now life is pretty good. We have a decent house, we have our Noah Maxx, our relationship keeps improving.

Now maybe I can retrain my brain to let go of the past and maybe even let go of the future, or at least not dread it.

I can say that in the past six months I've gotten much better at just being in the moment. I can sit with Noah and feed him, or watch him play and just be content.

Haircut #2

For the second time in six months, we shaved our boy's head. He's still got a really dry scalp, and with all that hair we couldn't moisturize it very well. Besides, cute as it was, his hair was out of control! Now we can focus on his beautiful face!




Poor boy, he was so tired he feel asleep on the floor while playing. So cute! He's at that stage where he's rolling over and moving around while sleeping in his crib. Now if he'll just learn to roll from front to back and stop being so frustrated.

First Opinions

Our baby isn't a baby any more. He's changing in so many small ways all the time. He definitely loves to drink in the world. I still say he's taking inventory around the house. I have informed him a couple of times that my desk and computer and mine, and he just has to get his own. And the remote will never be his!

So, we're making all these purees and trying to keep our growing boy well fed. This weekend we decided to add green beans and carrots. He promptly decided they do.not.taste.good! It was the funniest thing I've seen in ages - his reactions to them in his mouth and then his attempts to make sure no more got in there! Thankfully he still ate his sweet potatoes this morning. I'm thawing out some more apple sauce to mix in with the carrots, we'll see if that works. We also made some peach puree, but it's frozen for now. We'll see if that makes his mouth happy.

Keeping Pace

We had a nice conversation the other evening about how maybe now that Noah's getting a little older we should kinda, sorta try to get him on a little more predictable schedule. Um, yeah.

We thought, ok, we just pick a time of morning to get him up at the same time every day and try to get that a little more regulated. 6 a.m. seemed reasonable, it gives Nerdstar time with him before having to get ready for work. Since then he's woken up at 5:00, 6:30, 4:45, 5:00 and 4:30. WTF? So much for that.

We started keeping track of when he eats, sleeps, and naps to see if there's any pattern at all to it from day to day. Not so much.

Part of all of this is that he's growing so fast that he's often too hungry to get a long nap in.

We're trying all kinds of feeding strategies. Once we started solids we thought we'd decrease his formula intake a little - feed him four ounces of formula instead of six and pair it with a couple of ounces of solids. That usually ended up in him waking up hungry. But sometimes five ounces is too many. He is consistent in eating six times a day.

We're so glad we got the high chair. He really loves to sit in it and look out into the backyard while eating. And he insists on eating when we do, so it's nice to have him right there. He just loves being in the kitchen.

He sleeps well through the night, other than waking up too early. Maybe part of that is not having a set bedtime. But when he takes his "last" nap of the day between 4 and 6, we never know if it's for an hour, or three or four hours, or for the night. Some nights we end up waking him up around 7, 7:30 to feed and change him to get him ready for bed.

He's a very happy kid. That's what makes all of this bearable. He wakes up happy and is a sweet boy through the day. The only time he cries is when he's hungry. Although, he's starting to not be happy to be put down for naps unless he's really tired.

I guess it's all trial and error and just trying to keep pace with his growth and changes.

Noah In His High Chair

Feeding Our Big Boy

I'm fairly certain our boy will end up being well over 6 feet tall. Somehow this surprises me. For some reason, some weird part of my brain expected short little kids. To make that sentence even crazier, although I don't quite reach 5'2", I've never thought of myself as short.

Anyway. Our 5 1/2 month old boy is wearing 9 month sized clothes. He's awfully skinny in them, but he fills them length wise.

So in addition to figuring out the basics of solids, we're also trying to find the right amount to feed our little giant. We're downsizing his bottles and he's eating about two ounces of solids three or four times a day.

This means we spent a lot of time in the kitchen this weekend making him some food. We've got a decent supply of butternut squash puree in the freezer. We made a new batch of sweet potato puree and a batch of apple sauce. Then about every third day I make him a batch of oat cereal. He also eats lots of bananas.

I've always had a lot of mason jars to drink out of, so we got smart and used them for storing and freezing his stuff. Hopefully we've got two weeks of food. Although, we should probably find one new item for him to start eating next weekend.

So far he's happy with all of it. He's even a pretty neat eater so far - I'm sure that'll change the day he decides he has to be the one holding the spoon!!

The fun part is that he absolutely insists - rather loudly! - on eating when we do - even if he had his meal not that long ago and technically shouldn't be hungry. One afternoon at Chick-fil-A we discovered that a saltine cracker will placate him if necessary.

Nerdstar spent her entire pregnancy talking to him about food. It seems he was paying attention.

Good News

"Starting this week, citizenship forms for children of American parents born outside of the U.S. and passport applications will now feature gender neutral areas making it easier for gay and lesbian parents to obtain passports for their children.

The change, which began Monday, will use the title of "parent" instead of "mother" and "father." The new language will also show up on Consular Report of Birth Abroad forms, an official record confirming that a child born overseas to an American parent can become a citizenship at birth. "These improvements are being made to provide a gender neutral description of a child’s parents and in recognition of different types of families," the department said in a December statement."

From The Advocate

A Glimpse of the Goofiness

I have a feeling no one will ever know better than Noah how goofy I am. In fact, I was thinking earlier that when he can better understand what I'm saying to him throughout the day, I'm going to have to really improve the quality of my remarks!

Anyway. Ching and I have never been big fans of Oprah, but we're not haters either. I guess we feel our spirits are just fine without her show. But, now that there's a behind the scenes of season 25 show on her new network, we're so watching it! This has led to us, on occasion, talking in "Oprah speak" - you know, the way she says things like "You're GOING to AUUSTRRAALIIAAA!!"

Now I've found myself using it with Noah, as in: "It's Time to CHANGE your DIIAAPPERRRR!!"

Our growing boy

This picture does not even began to depict Noah Maxx's newfound joy at eating solid food! Over the weekend, we've made some applesauce, and made sweet potato mush for him to try out. We'd figured that we'll let him try the sweet potato mush first and then follow up with apple sauce after a few days. We also went to the store and got him two butternut squashes for his next food adventure after he tries the applesauce. The grocery shopping cart now has a distinct space for Noah Maxx's food!

We're pretty convinced that Noah Maxx is going through some kind of growth spurt right now. In the last 3-4 days, he felt heavier, and wasn't sleeping as much during the day since he kept waking up in hunger. It was apparent that formulas are no longer enough to keep him full. The GF took out a tape measure to measure him and his height was at 27 inches, and as we referenced his height from a month ago when he had his check up, he was at 24 inches....about a 3 inches growth over a month. His weight is now at 18 lbs., also a 3 lbs. growth from a month ago. We swear that most of these height/weight gains had happened in the last 3-4 days!

How did he respond to the sweet potato mush? He loved it! Ate a whole 2 oz. cup with gusto while we were having a late lunch with friends at a restaurant (His favorite place.) ! A bit later in the afternoon we mixed some oat cereal with half a banana and he inhaled almost the whole thing too! We had to take the cup away because he was starting to get sleepy and we were also afraid that his little stomach is going to explode or something!

I think his great grandma would have been so happy and proud of Noah Maxx, growing and loving his food! We're really happy too that so far he has shown a liking to solid food, but somehow we could not help it but to wonder about what if he is like one of these kids who are already 6 feet tall when he's 12? What if I have to get another job because grocery bills will soon equal mortgage payments? For those of you who don't really know, I EAT too, and probably eat more than I should be :-)

As the new year begins, we're just so happy to be parents to such a cute and pleasant baby boy! It really doesn't matter how much he'll eat, as long as he's happy and healthy!