The Kiefer Family: January 2011

Ricky turned 6 months last Saturday. Seriously, how has half a year gone by already since our precious son came into our lives?

Our big boy weighs in at 17lbs 6oz (50%) and measures 26 3/4" (70%). To add some structure to this post, I'm trying something new and will touch on the hot topics in baby life: eating, sleeping and milestones. So here goes...

Eating: We started solids about a month ago. Rice cereal was a no-go so we went straight to oatmeal and he loved it. I swear he even says "hmmmm" while I'm feeding him. The only problem with the oatmeal is that it stops him up pretty badly…which makes for an unhappy baby. So I now mix the oatmeal up with some pears that help alleviate his constipation. Speaking of pears... I'm making all of Ricky's baby food. I really wanted to do this when I read how easy and especially how economical it was. So far I've made squash, sweet potato, carrots, pears and peaches. Can I just tell you how much I enjoy it - a lot! Who knew, right? I swear that I’m not the crunchy-granola mom type but there's something so gratifying about making his baby food. And it's great that I'm also saving money at the same time…and it really is so easy to do... definitely a win, win situation in my book! I’m still exclusively breastfeeding and he still eats on a 3 hour schedule during the day at 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm and one “early morning” feeding at 4am or 5am.

Does it get an cuter than this?

Sleeping: I’m not going to lie, we've had our problems in the sleep department. Everything seemed to go downhill when he turned 4 months (my lack of posting was not a coincidence). Instead of dropping a nighttime feeding, Ricky was adding one (at midnight). This did not sit well with an already sleep deprived mama. After seeing two different pediatricians in the span of a month, they both agreed that our little chunk was very capable of sleeping through the night and we'd just have to let him CIO. We started this around 5 months and although we're not completely to the point where I’d like to be…we're close. He’s quit crying out at midnight, but for some reason he’ll still sometimes cry out at 2am. He’ll fuss for about 10 minutes and then usually fall back asleep. But for the most part, he'll eat at 6pm, go down for the night at 7pm and then need to eat again between 4 - 5am. That is totally doable.

Now naps are a different story - we're definitely still struggling there. For some unknown reason, he cannot sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time. You have no idea how batty this makes me. I've tried many tricks to get him to sleep longer but NOTHING works. I've done tons of research and although I’m not alone with a cat napping baby, there's pretty much nothing I can do. It's just something that he needs to grow out of…please God, can it be soon? He’s sleeping better at night though, so I suppose I should count my blessings and be happy with that.

Milestones/Achievements: Well, I’d love to brag about all of the milestones that Ricky’s hit but I can’t do that since he hasn’t hit any. LOL! I really thought that he would be rolling and sitting up by now but I think our little man is just lazy (or stubborn) and will obviously do things on his own time. At first I was panicking a little but then I decided to embrace it since he’s not going to be a baby forever. And he’s my last…so why not hold on to this immobile stage as long as I can? We did speak with his pediatrician about it and she didn’t seem worried. She just told us to keep encouraging him – so that’s what we’re doing. And don’t get me wrong, he’s still doing 6 month old tricks - like pulling his legs under him and pushing up onto his hands when doing tummy time. He has awesome hand skills with a dead-on aim. Anything is fair game now and he’ll grab it if it’s within his reach. Even though he has a zillion toys, the tv remote seems to be his favorite thing to grab and ‘play’ with these days….besides his hands and feet of course. I’ve resorted to wearing a pony tail all day long because he will grab my hair and pull it out in chunks whenever possible. Daddy is also a target since Ricky loves to grab and pull on his chest hair. Fun stuff I tell you!

Close but not 100% perfected...

He is still such a happy baby and is usually all smiles. He has the best baby laugh that I'll never tire of hearing. Big sister Mia still revolves around his world and he could probably sit there for hours just watching her. In fact, I made a 4 hour journey to Naples for Christmas and I know there was NO WAY that I could have made it the whole way with him if it wasn't for Mia. She entertained him in between naps and definitely got the 'best big sister' award for that. It really is magical to watch the two of them together.

Christmas Day!