Our six month update, just in time for Hudson to turn 7 months! Killing it.

At six months old, it became official: Hudson is THE cutest, smartest, and most charming baby on earth. What are the chances, right?! Luckiest mom ever 😉 Looking back at this month, the thing I think stands out most is how much fun it’s been. Hudson’s become this awesome little person—still a very dependent person who hates naps and loves milk, but a small human with a big personality that I love getting to know every day. And he’s OUR small human! I don’t think that will ever stop being crazy when I think about it.

At our last doctor’s visit, Hudson weighed in at 19 lbs and… I forgot how many inches tall he is. This is why we write things down, Laura! But, he’s super tall: in the 99th percentile for his age! His weight has leveled off a little bit—he’s still a chunk, but his weight is in the 75th percentile for his age. People everywhere we go continue to comment on how big he is (and how cute he is!), particularly when they hear he’s only 6 months old.

Which brings me to one of the many new developments this month: our raging social life! Just kidding, it’s not even close to that. But we did have to stock up on some non-pajama clothing, which is telling. Between our trips to the museum and the park thanks to some incredible, albeit slightly alarming, 60+ degree temps over the last few weeks, we’ve been out and about way more than we have in probably the previous 5 months combined. Which was borne out of necessity—J and I tried to take him to lunch a couple of times and he was completed overwhelmed by the loud noises and OTHER PEOPLE. Our big lunches out amounted to one person shoveling food into their mouth while the other person tried unsuccessfully to distract an on-the-verge-of-a-meltdown Hudson with Elmo videos. So I decided we needed to get out more, and we went for it.

It’s funny, because Hudson at home is all smiles, squeals, screams, and giggles. But outside of our bubble, he’s serious and observant, taking everything in, and extremely cautious of faces that he’s not very familiar with. And that’s putting it lightly. One of the women that works in our building LOVES him, despite Hudson’s best efforts. She literally did a bunny hop across our entrance lobby trying to get him to smile and he just looked at her like, what on earth are you doing, lady? So funny. His chubby cheeks also turn his little lips down a bit too, which contributes to his serious demeanor.

I don’t need him to smile at strangers, but I do want him to know that he can feel secure and even have a little fun outside of our home and with other people. He’s cracked a few smiles at some of the other museum attendees, and totally loved my friend Kim that came to visit last week. Mr. Charming with a bunch of smiles! So, progress 😃

Jason is a very measured, observant, and thoughtful person—just another example of how much of J I see in Huds already. We let Hudson watch a few (short!) episodes of educational baby shows every day, usually to get through the sometimes-crabby stretch right before bedtime, and he LOVES the shows with numbers in them. Total mini-Jason.

Over the last month, it’s also become apparent that he knows we’re his people. He grabs our faces, squeals when either of us come into the room, and will briefly rest his head on our shoulders when we pick him up out of his crib. He is not a snuggly guy because he is so, so, wiggly and active, but I think of those little moments as him giving us hugs, and they are the best. There was a week or two that were tough because he’d cry if I was out of sight or tried to put him own and walk away, which lined up with what I was reading about babies learning the concept of distance. He seems to be doing a little better with that now, perhaps thanks to a lot of loud, terrible singing on my part so that he’d know I was still nearby even if he couldn’t see me. Lucky Huds 😃

Hudson has earned a new nickname this month: Wreck-It-Ralph, because he’s intensely wiggly and a danger to anything in his reach—hair, laptops, and glasses of water or mugs of coffee are primo targets for aggressive swiping. Oh, and the cat. Poor Blitz. He also bucks backwards as hard as he can when we’re carrying him around, and then will come crashing forward with his huge head. Fun times.

He still isn’t really sitting on his own. He can do it, for a few seconds, but he honestly doesn’t seem to care. He’ll smile when he gets it and then immediately face-dive towards a toy. Why sit when you can roll? And he rolls everywhere these days. I’ll put him down on his playmat, go grab a glass of water, and thirty seconds later he’s laying in the middle of the room looking at me like, hey mom! I’m sure this is basically training wheels for the crawling and walking stages, but it’s been an adjustment, to put it lightly.

I remember in the early days wondering how on earth you entertain a newborn for hours. Thankfully, they take care of that for you by existing only to sleep and eat. But now at 6 months, we definitely play, and it makes the time go by so much faster. He loves peekaboo and to be lifted in the air or tickled. He’s in constant motion, rolling around grabbing for everything around him, stuffing as much as possible into his mouth, and then discarding it for the next toy. He loves animals with faces and soft toys the most. Sophie la Giraffe is finally getting some action despite months of me thinking he is the only baby on the planet to reject that sassy French lady.

Since he’s better able to engage with toys, he’s spending a lot more time on his belly. He seems a LONG way from crawling, but he’ll play on his belly for a few minutes, briefly flip onto his back for a breather, then roll right back on to the belly. Sometimes he strategically rolls back and forth to slowly scoot himself towards a toy that I’ve placed out of reach to entice him to attempt crawling. Bonus points for creativity, bud!

Huds has five teeth that have broken through. He is an adorable freak of nature with so many teeth so early! The first two were pretty miserable, but since then they don’t seem to bother him much. I saw the top two poking through when he gave me a big smile one day, and was totally shocked—I had no idea those were even coming in. Little tough guy.

Speaking of teeth, solids have been another big development this month.  I had originally planned to try baby-led weaning but after reading a bunch of forums about the gagging that accompanies BLW, I knew I couldn’t stomach it, so I started by just steaming and pureeing food. Which he was not into. We had a hilariously rocky start—Hudson flat-out rejected pretty much everything. Like, dodged his head away from the spoon and wouldn’t open his mouth, and if we snuck a bite in he’d look at us accusingly and in complete disgust. If he did not look exactly like his dad, I’d think he was switched at birth… if J and I are anything, it’s enthusiastic eaters.

Here’s a selection of Hudson hating food:

When my mom mentioned how much my sister and I loved cinnamon as babies, I decided to add some to pears that I pureed for him and he loved it. So that’s how we found out he just doesn’t like sucky baby food! Give him some flavor, and he’s all about it. He still makes this funny face of distaste for the first bite of everything he eats, but then once he processes it, he opens his eyes really wide and leans forward with his mouth open and does this low-level yell until you give him another bite.

So far, if we season it, he’s into it: I add low-sodium chicken broth to all of his savory foods and have even roasted vegetables with a little bit of avocado oil before pureeing them. Roasted green beans and squash went down way better than steamed peas. Understandably. He is also really into chicken, the only meat we’ve tried so far. Pureeing chicken is not my favorite thing to do, but hey, you can only be a crazy first-time mom once.

He love, love, loves peanut butter! He’d lick it off a spoon all day if I let him, and I bring the jar over to give him tiny swipes so I can eat my breakfast in the morning in peace 😉

He also gets a tiny taste of pretty much everything I cook lately and seems to approve–today I let him lick at tiny bit of the bolognese sauce I was making and he was very into it. He eats a huge bowl of oatmeal cereal with chicken broth every night before bed, which unfortunately was not the magical solution I thought it would be to get him to drop his 2-3am feeding.

Which brings us to sleep. I’ll start with the positive: we have to do very little to get him to sleep these days. We put him in his crib, give him his bunny, say good night and turn out the lights. Once in a while if we mis-time a nap, we’ll go in to give him his pacifier, but for the most part he goes down like clockwork and never needs our help getting to bed at night. We’ve almost gotten too good at this—sometimes I’ll try to rock him for a few minutes for the extra snuggles and he just squirms until we put him down in the crib. Le sigh.

Lest I sound like I’m bragging about my kid’s sleep, here’s the other half of the deal. He’s still waking up for a middle of the night feed around 2-3am. However, since he goes to bed at 6:30, that’s an 8ish hour stretch without eating at that point, breastmilk is digested quickly, and he’s a big guy. So while I dream of the days that I sleep a solid 8 hours again, this is doable for now because I basically sleepwalk to his room and he goes right back down. And hey, it’s been 6 months since I’ve slept through the night at this point, so what’s a few more?

His wakeup time is still all over the place – anywhere from 5-7. If it’s in the 5’s, I feed him and put him back to sleep. If it’s in the 6’s, we usually just call that the start of the day. I am a morning person and would love nothing more than for this to stabilize so that I could plan my own wakeup time around it and get a workout in or work on some of my own stuff before he wakes up. But, I’m sure that’ll come soon enough and Jason is awesome about taking him when he wakes up early so that I can have a little bit of time to myself.

I am beginning to think he’s never going to be a great napper. He usually goes right to sleep but he just can’t seem to stay asleep. Most naps are still 30-45 minutes, with outliers in both directions. But I’ve pretty much stopped obsessing about it because he’s generally so happy and doesn’t seem overly tired. Also, at this point we’ve tried literally everything to get him to nap longer, including installing paper blackout blinds that my cat loves and I hate. So these days he fluctuates between 2-3 naps a day, which means his awake times have become much longer: up to four hours (which is a lot, more often 2.5-3), which is crazy to think about considering just a few months ago he could barely stay awake for an hour.

And finally, because I could never share an update without including our original baby—the status of Hudson and Blitz. It’s going so, so well! Blitz will come and give Hudson a few headbutts daily, which is the cat equivalent of saying I LOVE YOU SO MUCH. Hudson is fascinated by Blitz and will drop all activity if Blitz is in sight, which is often because he’s our little shadow as we move between our “stations” at home. Blitz has patiently allowed some petting, though Huds hasn’t mastered “gentle pets!” yet and goes for an enthusiastic fur grab instead. Needless to say, all interaction is closely supervised, especially with the temptation to grab a waving tail. Blitz has been incredibly patient and sweet but I’m sure even he has his limits. I hope I always remember the moments with my boys, winding down with Hudson’s baby shows before bath time, with Hudson finally holding still and resting in my lap and Blitz at my side. The best.

I am such a cliche of a new mom with this multiple-thousands-of-words update but if I’m being honest, I could totally go on. Life with our little guy keeps getting better and better, and I understand now why parents often say that each new stage is the best. (Except with teenagers, pretty sure it stops there.) The perception of time is totally fluid, and life is in fast-forward. So even though I already miss my snuggly infant and the quiet days of naps together with the drapes closed, I’m soaking up every single day of right now with my little bud.

Here’s to another great month, bud. We love you so much!