Emily and Kolby: Samuel: Six Months Old

*I always write these updates on time but then they sit idle while I try to find time to put pictures with them and post. Samuel turns 10 months old in two days, but hey, better late than never ;)*

I don’t know of any better way to describe Samuel other than to say he’s our little sunshine boy. He’s so stinkin’ happy and easy and never causes any trouble (except when he boycotts sleep!) and just fills us and anyone he’s near with delight. How we ended up with not one but two endlessly happy and content babies is beyond me, but we are so grateful and their easy temperaments have allowed us to enjoy them all the more.

Samuel is in what I call the glory days of babyhood—where he sits up but can’t go anywhere, and all it takes to get a big smile is just a glance in his direction. It’s hard to imagine life with him getting any better, but I now know from experience that it somehow does.

I wrote this on Instagram but want to have it here as well: I’ve tried to get a picture or video that really captures his demeanor and I just can’t seem to. But I want to remember how he’s the definition of content. And so happy. And sweet sweet sweet. And I don’t know what we would do without him. He hears that every day. We’ll be going about our day at home and coming in and out of the living room and Sam’s just sitting quietly playing with whatever is nearby, happy as a clam, and we catch his eye and he lights up and flaps his arms and grins the most dapper grin. “Sammy boy, what would we do without you?”

I could seriously gush about him all day long.

A coworker of Kolby’s sent him home with a Mamaroo she insisted on us borrowing, and we kind of just stared at it in the corner of the living room for several weeks and had mixed feelings about the concept of a machine that “moves like you do” and rocks your baby to sleep. I want to do that myself, thank you very much. We called it Robo-mom and had a whole bit about it. Anyway, then one day Beckett had a poopcident and I was in the middle of my 20 minute song-and-dance routine to get Samuel to take a nap (sway, pat, shoosh, must be standing up, don’t even think about multi-tasking HE CAN SENSE IT, etc.) and in a moment of desperation I put him wide awake in Robo-mom and set it in the rock-a-bye mode and went to tend to Beckett. When I came back, lo and behold, DUDE WAS ASLEEP! For about a month from then on we used it fairly often for naps and Kolby and I ate every word we’d spoken against it. He napped great in it and there were several occasions where it was a godsend to use it to get him to fall asleep, when Beckett needed me or we had company and I didn’t want to disappear for 30 minutes. AMAZING.

Over the past month we transitioned him from napping as often as he seemed tired (eat, play, sleep, repeat) to two main naps a day plus a short snooze in the early evening if he needs it. I’m doing my best to time his afternoon nap with Beckett’s, and all the stars aligned one day a few weeks ago and they both napped simultaneously for over two hours and it was absolutely glorious.

He’s not sleeping through the night, and his sleep kind of fell apart the past few months. From 0-4 months he woke up once at night to eat and went back down easily, and that’s about as much as anyone can ask for and it was wonderful. Then from 4-6 months he was waking up 3-4 times at night and I’m nursing him and he’s small (5^th percentile) so I would always feed him when he’d wake up at night because I wanted to take every opportunity to help him gain some more weight. For awhile I was all "I don't mind... I know it'll be over in the blink of an eye so I'm cherishing it and not wishing it away yada yada." but whew it eventually did get old. It was time to try something new to help us all get more sleep so we started giving him a bottle of formula right before he went to bed. To tank him up so that either he’d start sleeping better or at least we could know he wasn’t hungry the first couple wakings and could have Kolby take those shifts. [Can I just take a minute to sing the praises of formula? We never used it with Beckett so this was a first for us and I can’t tell you how freeing it was to be able to make a big ole bottle for him that didn’t involve pumping multiple times to get enough (side note: pumping is seriously the worst.). And if he doesn’t finish it I don’t have to slowly pour it down the sink while weeping, ha! I’m certainly a fan of breastfeeding but boy have I enjoyed having a can of formula on hand.] Stay tuned I guess to see if he starts sleeping any better. I know you will all be on the edge of your seats.

On the development front, Samuel is sitting up independently and playing with toys, bringing anything he grabs to his mouth, reaching for things with both hands together, rolling over from front to back and from back to side, “talking” a ton and loving to say da-da-da, and holding his feet. And we turned a corner with car riding where he no longer screams bloody murder at any stop or deceleration or heaven forbid a red light. He started solids a couple weeks after his six month birthday and has had avocado, peas, green beans and sweet potatoes. He’s loved it and we are crossing our fingers he’ll be a great eater like Beckett was/is.

The thing I want to remember about him at this age is how easygoing he is and how his face lights up and his little arms flap with happiness when we greet him. He has the most dapper smile. And he flashes it often and guys it’s just the greatest sight in all the world. And if you greet him up close he’ll beam and reach for your face with both hands and it’s so great I can hardly stand it. I mean it, truly a sunshine boy.

And now, for pictures....

Cutest little mug in the world.