Six Months Old

Dear Jack,

Today is your six month birthday. We are halfway to that magical one-year mark.

A lot of things about this time aren't quite how I pictured them to be.

I thought I would still be nursing you, but over the last month, your nursing sessions got shorter and shorter and your formula intake got bigger and bigger until it was time to just be done. I'm sorry I didn't make it to a year with you, or even six months, but I will say that the pressure of pumping at work and not being able to share the joy of feeding you with your dad were intense and five months of wonderful breastmilk will just have to be enough.

I also thought you would be sleeping through the night by now. Everyone says not to compare siblings and I should have listened to them. Your sister sleeping through the night at four months has about as much to do with you as the migratory patterns of African swallows.

I had no idea you would be this mobile... you can roll across a room, roll back to front and front to back at will, get up on all fours and inch forward with your legs (which results in a face plant as your hands and arms don't really know what to do, yet). In short, you may be crawling any day now.

Your take on solid food has also surprised me. As hungry as you get (and as angry as you get about being hungry), I would have thought solid food would have been very exciting for you. Instead, you have my sensitive gag reflex and make the most horrid faces as the solid food hits the back of your tongue. You absolutely, positively, without a doubt HATE rice cereal. They say you have to introduce foods up to a dozen times in order for a child to take to that food. After try number fourteen, we realized it just wasn't going to happen. I had no idea little babies could purse their lips so tightly closed. On a related note, we are on try number four with the dreaded green beans, but on try two with peas, you thought they might be okay and just this evening, we tried oatmeal which you refused to eat in your highchair, but took to just fine if your daddy was holding you.

Your dad and I are as enamored of you as I had imagined we would be, but your sister is far more your friend and champion than I would have thought this early on. Just this evening, I had you up at my school for the Kindergarten play and all the students were touching your hands and arms and your sister came over and lowered the shade on your stroller, saying, "That's my brother!"

Six months. Was it only six months ago that I was eating lunch at Mama Fu's all in a tither over the impending c-section?

I can hardly remember all that upset. I expected that a c-section would be just terrible, but like so many of my other experiences, the expectation and the reality were far removed from each other. But I will say this: if none of my other exceptions for your first year are met, could I at least have the one where you start sleeping through the night?

At least a few times a week?

Love,
Mom