Our Little Blessing: June 2012

Jacob is now half a year old! That just doesn't even seem possible! This month has been so much fun, because he has been changing a lot and experiencing a lot of "firsts": first time at the pool, first time eating solid foods, and first teeth! That's right, Jacob is now sporting two teeth on the bottom! I have to say that the teething process wasn't as bad as I expected, but I know we still have many teething experiences to come. Hopefully we'll survive them all as well as we did this one. Jacob's first time eating solid foods was also a good experience. Right now we're just giving him one serving of fruits or veggies in the late morning, and then in a few weeks I'll start giving him a second serving later in the day. We started with sweet potatoes and then just started giving him bananas yesterday. He's still getting used to the sweet potatoes, but he loves bananas! I'm glad we waited until now to start, because he was definitely showing signs that he was ready. That seems to have helped the process go so well. One more "first" that Jacob is working on is sitting up on his own. He can sit up very easily with support, and just this week he has started to be able to sit up completely on his own for a few seconds at a time. He's not totally there yet, but I think by the end of the month he'll be able to sit up longer on his own and really become independent with this skill. It's so exciting to see him able to do more things.
Jacob's little personality is showing much more these days. He has really been experimenting with different sounds and is babbling all the time. I keep trying to get him to say "hi," "Momma," and "Dada," but he's not quite there yet. Right now it's just entertaining to listen to all his noises and try to guess what he's saying. Jacob is also still very well behaved when we go out places. Sometimes at restaurants he prefers sitting in our laps over sitting in his carseat, so I think it will be nice to be able to put him in a highchair once he can sit up a little bit better. Then he can be up with Mommy and Daddy and see everything that's going on. It is still so fun to be able to take him out places and let him experience new stores or restaurants with us. Such a difference from his newborn months!
Jacob's sleeping habits are still not the best. He hasn't been waking up as much at night, which is good- usually only once or twice. The downside is that he's mostly been sleeping swaddled up in his swing. I am really trying to break him of this habit, so this week we've been leaving one arm out of the swaddle when he sleeps and are slowly working on putting him back in his crib like this for at least part of the night. I'm hoping that once he's back in his crib for longer that we can completely remove the swaddle or loosen it a little more to start to break that habit. I have been going back and forth with the whole sleep training thing lately and am not sure whether or not we will do it right now or wait longer to see how he does on his own. It's just so hard to hear him cry, and he's doing so many new things that I don't want to stress him out by working on sleep as well. Right now we're just taking it one step at a time, and we'll see how he does with weaning from his swaddle for the moment.
Well, I think that's it for this month. Like I said, a lot has been happening so it's going to be hard to keep these posts short from now on! Below are a few pictures of our big boy this month!