6 months old!

Dear Asa,

You are now 6 months old. It's mind boggling. Where is the time going?!? We love you SOOO much! You fill our days with smiles, fun, laughter, squeaks, squeals, cuddles, and games. You are precious to us--it makes our hearts feel like they will burst. :) It's hard to believe it was just 6 months ago we first held you in our arms. Your long body filled our arms, and now you fill our hearts and home and life. :)

You have been growing and changing so fast! For awhile you had a "letter of the week" and practiced different vowel sounds for about a week at a time. Now you sound like pterodactyl as you combine those various vowels into crazy dinosaur sounds. :) You have even thrown in some consonants, which your doctor says is a 6-9 month skill. You have said dada (while Dada was holding you, though we know you don't know what that means), lala, and rara. Your vowel coos are aaaaa (short a), ooooo, an oooo that sounds like it has an umlaut, eeeeee (long e), and iiiiiii (long i), as well as a really throaty aaaahhhhh and some other crazy throaty sounds. You crack us up!

Speaking of cracking up, you laugh and giggle. Your first laugh was just before 3 months when I zerberted you. Now you laugh for silly faces, in response to our laughter/silly sounds, and to tickles. You do not always laugh or even respond to tickling, but sometimes you go crazy! I can tickle your ribs, your neck, and your tummy and you LOVE it. It is music to my ears. :) I can't wait to catch it on video and share. It makes me so joyful to see YOU full of joy.

You discovered you have hair--took you long enough considering how much hair you have! You were waving your arms around and settled your open palm on top of your head. Then you patted around your head feeling all the fluffy ducky down you have. You have started swirling your hand around your hair when you eat, too. I think you like your hair. :)

You are sitting totally unassisted. You went from sitting by yourself for 5 seconds to 20 seconds in just a few days. A week or so later you were starting to lift your hands off your lap to play with or reach for things and started balancing yourself. Now you are a sitting pro. You can sit and sit and play and reach and rebalance. You can EVEN get from laying down to sitting up all by yourself. The first time you did it was in Knoxville for Christmas. I went to get you after a nap, and there you were sitting in your crib looking at my like, "What's the big deal?" What's the big deal?!? How did you know how to do that? Now I often find you sitting when I go to get you from your bed. Amazing!

You are not crawling (not that I would expect you to yet), but you have this amusing snowplow maneuver. While you certainly can hold your head up, you don't! You'll lay on your tummy, see something you want, scrunch your legs up underneath you, and then propel yourself forward in an inchworm/snowplow fashion with your face still on the ground. I hate to tell you, you have some major road rash on your face. ;) Then, you can be quite drooly, so you end up dragging your sweet face through your drool! You were very Rudolph-esque for Christmas with a red nose and rosy cheeks--from your scooting, drool, the cold air, and the dry heater. We've been lathering you up with lotion! We can put you on your hands and knees, and you can support yourself that way--with your head up off the ground--but when you want to move you plop it back on the carpet and start plowing. It makes us laugh. :) And I am secretly glad you are not crawling yet. I'm not ready for you to be that big!

You have a TOOTH. That's right, you are becoming a bigger boy every day and have a tooth to prove it. After a couple months of faucet-like drool and about 2 weeks of a pronounced little lump on your gums, your first tooth poked through on Dec. 28. On our way to Rock Hill to see Nana and Poppy I happened to glance in your mouth and saw the distinctive shape of a tooth JUST below your gums. By the time we got to Rock Hill, a corner had poked through, and by the following morning the whole top edge of the tooth was through. Now your pearly white sticks up a big from your gums. You've been great about not biting me, but you were very chewy when it first happened. Your drooly has largely subsided now that the tooth is through. I do not feel any more lumps, so while I could definitely be wrong, I do not think another tooth is imminent. You are our little uno for now. :)

You LOVE stacking cups. Goodness gracious, you think they are fun. You knock them over and love to hold the cups (and mouth them). You are very entertained by them.

You are wearing size 2 diapers. You can technically fit in size 1 (we're using up a rogue pack of them) in terms of weight, but you are a bit long for them! You have a check up with Dr. K this month, and we anticipate her giving us the green light for baby food. I am excited to see what you like--and you are showing EVERY sign that you are eager and ready to try out some food. You grab at anything you can if you are in our laps while we eat. But I find it hard to believe you are old enough to work toward "big people" food. YIKES! In order to begin the transition to solids, we set up your high chair when we returned home from Christmas travels. You were not a big fan at first. But you will now sit in it playing for 15-20 minutes if you are well rested. I set you in it while I prep dinner or eat breakfast. And I give you your vitamin D drops while you are sitting in it, because you love those little drops. That is my attempt at a positive association for you with the high chair!

I will make a separate post about your first Christmas, but it was so fun and such a blessing to have you with us and to celebrate your first Christmas with our families.

I am overwhelmed at the blessing and responsibility of teaching you about God. I love our snuggle times every morning when we read The Jesus Storybook Bible after you eat. I love how each story--from the Old Testament to the New Testament--points to Jesus. And I am so thankful to stop and pray with you for our hearts to turn to Him, for you to know and trust and love and follow Him. And I am thankful for friends and family who pray the same thing for you. God is so good.

You are precious to us. I love you more than words can say and I am so thankful to watch you grow and play every day. Happy 6 months to you, Asa! I can only imagine how much more you will change over the next 6 months!