7 Months

The sixth month flew by faster than any of the other months due to all the appointments, hospital stays, and surgeries. In a way it's sad because we feel like we missed out on a lot of the "normal" 6 month time, but hopefully it will all be worth it in the long run. Meanwhile, there's no holding this baby down. He has continued to develop and make us proud. He is now super close to consistently crawling. He started by pushing up and moving backwards, but now he has the hang of it that he can go forward 2-3 "crawls" before landing back on his stomach and pushing back up to try again. He sure can get pretty much anywhere he wants to go, and gets the most hilarious look of determination on his face when he's attempting his crawling. He can also sit up by himself for several minutes once you put him into place, and is able to turn from his stomach to his bottom and ALMOST get into sitting position on his own. His two front bottom teeth are completely in, and he is now getting his left lateral top tooth. He is doing a great job of eating his solids, and is on Level 2 baby food. He has loved every fruit and vegetable we have tried. His favorites seem to be bananas and green beans. He isn't a big fan of the meats, but we're working on it.

As a speech therapist I'm reluctant to say this, but he is saying "ma ma" pretty consistently. The daycare staff, my mom, Karen, me, and even Patrick all seem to agree that he is saying it. He also has many more consonant sounds and loves hearing himself and his jargon.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to slowly, and non-traumatically wean off of breast feeding. I had planned to wean at 6 months, but the sweet baby had so much going on with his kidney and surgeries I didn't want to put him through the weaning process during all of that. So, I finally bought some formula (Similac Sensitive) this past week and have been making his cereal with it in the morning to get his little system used to it. He hasn't had any reactions so far, which is a blessing. I have a good bit of breast milk stored in the freezer, which is what he is now using at daycare because I am no longer pumping. I'm currently still nursing in the morning and at bedtime to slowly wean us both. He will have enough breastmilk to get him through the next 3 or so weeks at daycare, and then I'll start doing half and half with the formula and then transition to all formula for just a couple of months before he turns one. This is the plan, but we'll see how it actually works haha. Banks loves his nursing time.

I can't wait to see him develop even more over the next month, but hopefully this one will go a little slower :-)

As far as pictures go, it is nearly impossible to capture him sitting still now. We do, however, have lots of laughs while trying to take them...