Owey Bear at 6 months

I do realize Mr. Owey Bear is now 9 months old, but I just couldn't pass up sharing these pictures of him at 6 months that my friend Tracy took of him.  And oh how beautifully she captured his default state of pure sweetness.  Can I just keep him this little and squishy and sweet forever?  

I write this blog for many reasons.  One, because I love to write.  It's such a great release of my emotions, it's relaxing and I love being able to say something that my spoken words just can't seem to get out sometimes.  My brain just loves this way of communicating.  And another, which I have been bad at lately is that I want to have a record of what life was like at different stages with my kiddos. To read back my words later and to have them written in a way that will almost physically transport myself back to these precious times.

So Owen at six months...

Weight: 18 lbs. 9 oz. Height: 27 inches long  Wow how he has grown!

He is quite a stable sitter and can roll anywhere he wants to go.  His rolling is better than any of my other boys.  It just has this stealth like speed and agility that I never saw with my other two.  As if he's in a mission impossible movie trying to make it across a floor of infrared lights to acquire a precious jewel. The precious jewel often looks oddly like a tiny little lego or other highly chokable object. 

Owey Bear how I wish I could say you are a great sleeper, but that rather doozey of a respiratory illness (bronchiolitis they think) right after Christmas did a number on setting you back in the sleeping and eating category.  You are pretty much waking up once a night, usually around 2 or 3 to nurse and then will fall back asleep until 6:30 or so.  This is the new normal and much better than in the weeks right after you were sick (4 and 5 times) so I'll take it.  And I've pretty much given up on the bottle at this point.  It's just not worth putting you through such discomfort, so we just go out an hour later on date nights after you've fallen asleep.  After having such an aversion to rice cereal we are holding off on solids for a bit.  And by aversion I mean, his little system just wouldn't tolerate it.  The two times I tried, two hours later exactly he would throw up every 10 minutes until there was nothing left in his system.  Poor little guy.  The dr. suggested waiting on grains until 9 months and a couple of weeks after his last episode to start trying first fruits and veggies.  This he was not fond of either, but at least he was able to hold them down and that was a good sign.  Oh, I'm just simply not stressing about this.  As you can tell from his sweet plumpness he's getting plenty of nourishment from his mama.  Oh how I will miss nursing my baby when the time comes.

These pictures truly capture his laid back sweetness.  He is such a delight!  He chuckles when something excites him.  It's really his signature sound and I don't quite know the words to describe it.  Luckily I've bottled it up in some of my videos so I can play them back on a day when he's a preschooler and I am searching for more patience with him, perhaps when he has decided to bite one of his brothers or painted on the wall or something unimaginable, yet inevitable.  Again I say...oh please just stay little forever!

He loves people!  I'm of course his number one favorite still at this point, but oh does he have such an outgoing personality.  He adores his brothers and boy do they adore him.  They fight over who gets to hold him, who gets to help me give him a bath, put his p.j.s on, etc.  And Daddy, well just like the other two, he thinks he's hung the moon.  The smile he gives him when he gets home is priceless.  And everyone else, well he adores them too.  He happily goes into others arms to visit and smiles at just a hello.  He's just so good natured and man does it help to have him happily go to someone else for a bit when my two arms just aren't enough for the guys in my life.  Thank you Owen.

If I could only bottle up the way those fluffy little 6 month thighs feel and how soft his skin is, but how could I forget that? I won't!