Half-Birthday

When I was young, I used to relish celebrating my half-birthday. Well, it was a celebration in my mind, at least; we never had any real celebration of the event, but I enjoyed remembering the day, nonetheless. As I mentioned in my previous post, Jack was six months old on February 25th (marking his "half-birthday"). We celebrated the event by going to the doctor, peeing all over the scale (Jack, not Mommy and Daddy), and receiving several shots (Jack again). For the first time, Jack had a bit of a reaction to the shots, but is feeling better now.

We learned that Jack is 27.5 inches tall (85th percentile), 17 pounds 14 ounces (58th percentile), and his head is 46.5 cm (98th percentile). We knew he had a big head, but didn't know it was bigger than 98% of babies his age. Hopefully, it is filled with brains and not rocks or one big boulder.

Here are some of his six month pictures that I mentioned the other day.

Giddyup, pillow!

Senior pictures only 17 years away

You're right, these do have a funky odor

It's damn hard work holding up a big noggin like this!

Beef...It's What for Dinner

Well, maybe a while down the road it will be. For now, it is rice cereal. Jack finally entered into the world of solid foods this weekend. We had been intending on getting Jack started on solids for a little while now (his doctor told us we could start between 5-6 months), but life interfered. Friends had given me the advice to start solids on a weekend because it could be a messy, time-consuming affair, and for weeks it seemed that we were either out-of-town or Jack was sick and the doctor recommended holding off so that we didn't end up with solids coming out one end or another in a more liquid form.

The actual cereal feeding itself was a bit anti-climatic. Jack didn't turn any cartwheels, our kitchen escaped relatively unscathed, and dreams of solids bringing on a longer, more restful night sleep proved unrealized (so far, at least). Nevertheless, we have achieved an important milestone, one for the (baby) books.

Fired up! Ready to go!

Whatcha got in there?

Can't a guy eat in peace?

It takes a very steady hand!

Ugh! I think some of your arm hair got in my cereal.

Mmmm, next stop, Murray's for some steak!

This weekend, we achieved a few other significant milestones as well. I took Jack in for his six-month pictures on Friday. (He is six-months old today!) And after running to one post office only to be told to go to another because "we don't process those on Saturdays, even though our own website says we do" (and no, we can't change the website), trying to find the next post office using the (wrong) address given to us by the postal staff, consulting with our friend Mike for assistance over the cell phone, and desperately using our best self-talk to keep from hauling off and hitting the oh-so-helpful mail personnel, we applied for Jack's passport. It's hard to say whether running all over town or trying to assist the Kinko's guy take a passport photo according to the State Department specifications ("he's gotta be looking at the camera with his mouth closed and the picture needs to fit between these lines, even though he can barely stay still for half a second") was more difficult. Actually, it's not hard at all. The running all over town wins, hands down. Thank goodness a passport is good for five years!

Jack has his six-month check-up tomorrow, so I'll try and "check-in" with stats and some of his new "official" pics.

I Didn't Forget You, Valentine!

What? Valentine's Day was LAST Thursday?
Oh, Fudge!

Do you know what this thing says?

Be mine!