July 30

After our late night last night, Chris and I were hopeful that the kids would sleep in. Amazingly, both girls slept later than normal! I decided to cancel all activities this morning, and we puttered around the house. I rearranged Eli's new room, emptied out his new closet, brought up 6-9 month clothes, and finally managed to take his 6-month pictures while the big three played on the swing set.

As soon as we finished, I decided it was nap time. Amazingly, all four children have been sleeping for the past two hours, so I capitalized on the time to edit Eli's pictures.

At Eli's 6-month checkup on Monday, he weighed 15 pounds, 5 ounces, which is the 15th percentile, and was 25.5 inches long, which is the 10th percentile. At his 4-month checkup, he had fallen off the charts for length, but he was right back on his curve this time.

Developmentally, Eli is still hitting milestones later than my other three children have. However, he is now within the range of normal, and our doctor told me that Eli has officially caught up in every area. There is now no indication at all that he was ever a preemie. Praise God!

Chris was concerned that Eli's skull bones had fused on one side, but not the other, so I mentioned it to our doctor. She determined that he has a flat spot on the back of his head, causing it to fuse differently. Because his face is still symmetrical, it doesn't warrant a referral to a plastic surgeon to discuss a helmet, but it does need to be addressed. We realized it's likely due to the fact that Eli always sleeps on the same side, so the doctor recommended I move to the other side of the bed so that Eli will be forced to nurse and sleep on his other side.

Easy fix, right?

Not so much. Eli and I are both having a hard time adjusting to the change, and we are sleeping poorly because of it. Boo. But it just increases my motivation to move him out of our bed and into his crib. He is napping there now, but bedtime is a challenge for him. Last night, though, I put him to bed in his crib and he slept there for an hour and a half! That's real progress!

He has also started rolling onto his belly when he sleeps, and tucking his knees up under him with his bottom in the air. It's adorable.

He is definitely a proficient roller, but definitely not sitting yet.

Just in case, though, I tried sitting Eli up to see what would happen. All of my other three sat right before six months. 

At first, it looked promising! He's sitting!

But he quickly began leaning...

Boom! Taco sit. Oh, well. It will happen soon enough.

In the past month, he has also discovered his toes.

They're pretty much his favorite thing.

Eli is growing curiouser and curiouser, and is much more aware of his environment. He smiles at strangers, and shows no signs of stranger or separation anxiety yet.

Right now he's taking about 2 and a half naps per day - a good one in the morning, and a nice long one in the afternoon, and sometimes a cat nap around dinner time. Bedtime is still really rough for him; I'll nurse him and put him down in his crib, but he only lasts 15-30 minutes there. Most nights, Chris will put him in the Ergo and wear him until we go to bed. I'm not sure what I'll do when Chris goes to Wisconsin!

Eli is still nursing through the night, which usually isn't a problem since he's in bed with me. Most of the time, he wakes to nurse every 2-3 hours. The past few nights have been an awful exception. But the trade-off of nursing through the night is that Eli's long stretch of sleep and not eating is from about 6 am until noon. That makes mornings so much easier! He sleeps until 9:30, and then we can go play without stopping to feed him. I'm sure that will end soon, but for now it's pretty nice.

As I wrapped up our photo shoot, I noticed that Eli had rolled over to his side and was playing with the grass. Like I said: he's getting curiouser and curiouser! What a fun baby he is!