Tristan had his 6 month checkup; everything’s fine but he’s so much more NORMAL sized now. He got jabbed in the leg in the name of disease prevention, but the only eventful thing was that we were in and out an hour after the appointment time. This is amazing, because his 4 month shots required about a 2 hour wait just for the SHOTS.

And almost as if this happened overnight, he began being MOBILE. He’s known how to roll for quite some time, but he’s recently learned how to take advantage of that. He can no longer be left unstrapped or uncorralled by some means.

With that whole desire to get around thing, he’s also trying his hardest to learn to crawl. We were practicing in his room tonight and have been for the past few nights, and he really seems to almost get it. Of course, I’ll say this and he won’t crawl til he’s 9 months old, but he’s really acting all crawly.

We also have our first tooth! It’s the bottom left front tooth. With its arrival, we’ve had a very cranky baby at times. We can’t tell if he has another one about to come through soon with his fussiness of late. It’s getting hard to tell if he’s sleepy or just fussy at times, or fussy because he’s so sleepy, or pretending to be sleepy but really wanting to jump.

We started using the front-facing stroller just for S&G last night – previously, he was in the infant seat on the stroller frame that’s rear-facing if he wasn’t in one of the carriers up with us. In any event, he didn’t get much stroller time and liked the rear-facing version fine. However, he thought it was the coolest thing ever to be in the front-facer, because now he can see SO much that’s interesting to him. Damn me for blocking his view, hehe.

We also got him a jumper and holy crap, our baby can JUMP. A video is posted in the video gallery.

His solid food consumption is good; he’s fed solids 2-3 times a day and can put away about half of a stage 1 food jar. We’re still logging in everything he eats, although as of now I’ve got some formatting work to do on that page.

And as far as the pumping, I decided to stop as my 6 month goal has been achieved.

Added 9 new pics and 2 new videos.

Tristan’s tooth is fairly visible now. It’s still very small, but it’s visible if you can get him to move his giant tongue aside. It’s just the one (bottom left) but it’s here and probably causing him to be cranky.

He quite possibly crawled today. We were all playing upstairs with him and he rolled all around the room, to places that were somewhat troublesome like the corner of the nighttable and the foot of the chaise lounge. We were playing human fence to keep him out of trouble – no, we haven’t babyproofed and I’m hoping to not have to, because we plan to move by the time real babyproofing is necessary. That being said, perhaps some extra pillows may do the trick. Anyway, he rolled around the room and he also got up on his hands and knees, and we think he got a “step.” We’re expecting a bit more crawliness to come!

Tristan is almost 6 months old already!

Alert the presses… Tristan is actually -cooperating- with us about eating peas. He’s just snarfed down half a bowlful, actually opening his mouth wide to let the spoon in. Amaaazing.

Of course, having written that, he immediately started fussing and trying to dodge the spoon. So much for that 🙂

Posted new videos in 5 – 6 months

Added 7 new pictures into 5-6 Month category.

Tristan is currently learning how he needs to get up on his knees if he wants to crawl like he’s been so desperately trying. It’s only a matter of time and bodily strength. I’m so glad he’s getting this, because he’s been SO frustrated when on his tummy for a few weeks now.

I started my lunch up at about 1pm, give or take a few minutes. Tristan had already had a good portion of his, but his appetite was sort of low. I put him in the Exersaucer and sat down on the floor near him to eat. About halfway through lunch (about five minutes) he started fussing. I took him out and put him on the floor, and he continued to fuss. I scarfed my lunch, assuming he had regained his appetite, and made Tristan a quick 2oz bottle (his leftover bottle wasn’t smelling like something I wanted to put into a baby). After about an ounce of it, he wasn’t taking any more and he was still fussing. He’d only been up for about two hours, and it usually takes longer for him to be sleepy these days. I gave him a fresh diaper..

The next logical step was the teething check. This time, I definitely felt something there. Tristan stopped screaming when I let him suck on my finger. And a lot of shoving of lips and tongue later, I saw the very beginning of an erupting tooth.

Now that he’s napping (Tylenol and a sling ride helped calm him down), I don’t want to wake him to examine further, so I don’t know which tooth it is yet other than one of the bottom front two. Since this child has the snake tongue of doom, it’ll take two of us and a flashlight to get a really good look. But this baby is teething! Oh no!

We started Tristan on his third “solid” food tonight, peas. He doesn’t seem to be a fan so far. In fact, aside from the rice cereal, he’s sort of reluctant with solids. I’m sure that will change once we throw some fruit in, though. We’re keeping a basic food log with start dates for each food, and this brings him up to three. I was reading about another family who had poor luck with the cereals and good luck with peas, but I don’t think peas are the magic food for Tristan.

One of the fun things with Tristan is making him giggle at certain words. When we screwed up our faces and said “vegetables!” to him, it would almost always make him giggle like crazy. There may be a video of this up; if not, it will be up soon. I guess now that he knows what vegetables ARE, he’ll be slower to giggle.

On an unrelated note, we have his naps figured out! He generally takes a nap between feedings, something like this (times are approximate):

10am: wake up, bottle
2pm: bottle, nap
4pm: wake up
6pm: bottle
10pm: bottle, nap
2am: bottle, back to sleep

We’re doing a lot better with waiting until he’s close to passing out before putting him in the crib, as opposed to making him cry himself to sleep. However, he’s getting better at not having to be fully asleep before he will let himself land in the crib and drift off for a nice nap. Prior to this development, putting him into the crib at any point that wasn’t the overnight sleepytime meant he’d wake as he was lowered and be somewhat pissed off about it. Anyway, he’s sleeping better and we’re finally getting some baby-free time while he naps.

Also, as of today I am down to just one pumping session per day (the evening one).

About yesterday, we noticed that Tristan’s response to most any speech directed at him was to snake his tongue out of his mouth and stick it out, very slowly. It’s completely freaking adorable, and I can’t stop giggling when he does it, so this kid is likely going to end up with a habit of sticking his tongue out.