Sechs Monate

I now understand why all of the writers and artists that I love so much are so internally tortured.

I used to be so inspired and could write for days…

What changed?

Happiness.

Six years ago I met Billy and in came happiness and out went creativity.

Ohh well. At least I can document experiences here, even if it is not inspired and beautiful.

So my baby… cliché, cliché, cliché. Yeah, clichés are all I can think to write.

“I love him more than life, than I could have ever imagined.”

“Everything else seems so unimportant now.”

“His smile lights up my world”

“Parenting is hard work, full of guilt, even if it is unwarranted guilt.”

6 month stats:

9200 g

72 cm

He is rolling everywhere, loves to stand up with the help of someone or the back of a couch, and army crawls around the floor to get to what he wants. He sits on his own and can go from sitting to army crawl on his own, but he cannot get back to the sitting position on his own. We are probably a week away from moving from the infant car seat to the next stage.

At our six month appointment, the doctor said that since I was only producing enough milk for 2-3 bottles a day that we should just drop the formula, breastfeed him morning and night and feed him regular food / sippy water cups all the time in between. We have tried this, but it is nearly impossible to fill him up without the extra milk. He eats so slow that it would take us 2 hours to fill him up. Hopefully we will get to this soon enough, but right now it isn’t working. Today I dropped the pumping at work though. I wasn’t producing enough milk except for one bottle anyway. It just wasn’t worth it. So 2 breastfeeds and 2 formula feeds per day… plus whatever food we are eating.

He started waking up 2x per night around 6.5 months. Up until then, he has been such a wonderful sleeper. He would go to sleep between 8 and 8:30 and wake up between 6:30 and 7 everyday. On Saturday and Sunday we would usually bring him into our bed when he woke up and he would go back to sleep with us for another hour or so. I think this waking up is a combination of teething and hunger. Hopefully we will get through this stage sooner rather than later. I cannot complain too much though… it definitely could be worse.

He smiles ALL THE TIME. I haven’t been around enough babies to know if this is a normal thing or not, but I just love it. Plus it makes me so so so proud to carry him around and hear Germans constantly stating “sehr freundlich”--- granted Germans would find American DMV workers friendly, but it still makes me proud.