Ethan is 6 Months Old!

Ethan is officially six months old...can you believe it?! I cannot believe how much our lives have changed in such a relatively short period of time. I must apologize for the lack of posts lately. I have been so busy with my freelance work that every minute I haven't been taking care of Ethan has been spent working. It was great to have a big project to work on over the course of the past week a half in addition to my regular responsibilities, but I'm looking forward to the return of normalcy. This past Wednesday I woke up at 2:30 am and couldn't go back to sleep so I started working at 4...am! That is seriously crazy, and made me realize that I need to do a better job of balancing being a full time mom and working part time from home. I'm doing a good job of taking care of Ethan and getting all of my assignments completed, but I haven't been doing such a good job of taking care of myself. If I ever have another week where I have a project with a tight deadline I think I'll have to have a friend come over and help me out with Ethan for a few hours so that I don't have a repeat performance of the day of the living dead that was this past Wednesday. (And no, I did not nap or anything all day - I looked freaky scary by the day's end!)

Ethan has started solid foods in addition to his rice cereal. So far he has had bananas, apples and sweet potatoes. I'm giving him each food for 4 days and then moving on to the next food so that I can watch closely for any signs of an allergic reaction. He did not like bananas the first day he tried them:

Day 2 with bananas went MUCH better:

I realized that I made a big mistake the day before - I tried to feed Ethan bananas at his regular feeding time and since he was hungry all he wanted was his milk. The next day I waited about 45 minutes after I nursed him and tried the bananas again and SUCCESS - he loved them! He liked his apples okay, and then we moved on to sweet potatoes today and after making a priceless face of disgust to start with he devoured his whole serving. So far the introduction of solid foods has not caused any constipation issues (not to be gross, but I've heard that this can happen) but I have some prunes on hand and if that seems to be an issue that will be the food that we'll do next to fix the issue.

Ethan had his six month check up on Thursday and everything went really well. He is officially 17 pounds 2 ounces (50th percentile) and 27 inches (75th percentile.) He was in the 50th and 75th percentiles respectively at his 4 month check up as well, so he seems to have found his growth curves and is staying steadily on them right now. We'll see if this holds up at his 9 month check up as well.

Ethan is sitting up now! I still have to sit right by him so that I can keep him from toppling over (he's not super steady yet) but it's so cute to look over and see him sitting there. He has changed so much in just 6 short months. One of his favorite activities is to sit in my lap (this boy is a serious cuddle bug) and play with his around town baby driver toy that my mom got him for Christmas. I can sing every song on that toy, but he loves it so I won't give that toy a time out...yet.

Ethan and I are going to visit my sister tomorrow for the rest of the weekend. Patrick is staying home since he has to work, so he is going to get a weekend off from daddy/husband duty. I'm hoping that he might want to clean the house in my absence, but we'll see ;) As busy as I've been the past week, our house looks like a tornado has crash landed here. At least this coming week should be much more normal.

I know I'm way behind with posts and I have so much to catch up on, but I'm going to cut this short for now and go spend some qt with my husband before I leave tomorrow. Cross your fingers that Ethan does well this weekend with just me - I'm a little afraid of a car trip by myself, putting Ethan to bed in the pack n play (he loves his crib so I'm hoping that he'll still sleep through the night), and getting him totally out of his routine. I'm sure I'll have some stories to share when I get back!