6 months

I've seen this format on a few friends' blogs (Hi, Ruth and Gen!) and thought it was a good way to summarize where our big boy is at now. Wow, half a year already. Go ahead and insert all the cliches about time moving too fast, it's all true. A blink and he's going to be all grown up!

Personality Total Mamma's boy. He loves to mux on my face and gives big hugs when you pick him up from his naps. In his own home, he's very opinionated, wants to see every thing that each of us is doing, expects to be held all the time. Out in public, he's very subdued and really just taking everything in. You have to work pretty hard to make him break his sober supercilious expression, but at home he makes the funniest faces. He's really starting to interact with Henri and she with him, and they've started to wrestle together. I worry when she plants an elbow in his stomach but he doesn't seem to mind in the least and loves to grab her hair and chew on her (which she thinks is hilarious).It's fun to watch their bond, and it's clear Hudson loves everything about Henri. He's quite sympathetic to her moods as well and now when she cries he does too, stopping occasionally to look at her in a worried way. As soon as she tells him she's OK he lights right back up again.
Physical His 6mo appt isn't for another week, but unofficially he's in the 18-19# range and seems tall; he's outgrown most of his footies. His head continues to be large and bumpy but two appointments with the neurosurgeon later we're pretty confident he's just on the abnormal end of normal (whew, no surgery needed for now). Hudson is a very delicate roller and has learned to scoot forward on his forearms though he tends to just "swim" with his arms and feet in the air and go nowhere, then scream till I get him what he wants. He likes to bounce in his jumper and is learning to manipulate the toys on it. I just realized I should have been working on sitting with him, so we started that this week. He tips to the side but when placed in a well balanced way has great ab muscles and can lean down to get a toy then sit back up straight. His hair continues to be red and spiky (yay!) and his eyes are turning more grey than blue. He has 2 bottom teeth with 2 more coming in and just learned how to give good bites with them (ouch!).
Eating We're still going strong breastfeeding which I'm so grateful for. Really no big problems with that so I'm hoping to continue to 24ish months like I did with Hen. However, he has discovered the world of food and he's a pretty enthusiastic eater. I'm doing a loose version of baby led weaning, meaning I give him whole food when I feel it's safe or low in ingredients, put a lot of stuff into his feeder so he can taste but not choke, and feed him a bit of puree. Up till a few days ago he just wanted to taste things but now he actually wants to eat so I'm having to be more deliberate about what I make for supper because if he's not included, well, there are many tears. So far his favorite foods are dill pickles (crazy boy), apples, and grapes. He's had green beans, celery sticks, mum-mums, puffs, yogurt, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, squash...I think that's it. I gave him a sippy cup with some water last night to just gum on and in about 10 seconds he'd figured out how to drink from it and gulped down a ton before I could stop him (pretty sure babies aren't supposed to be drinking water yet?). I'm going to try some breast milk in the cup since he refuses a bottle. I was impressed because Henri still can't use a tip up sippy. It's nice for Hud to do one thing before his sister since he's been so far behind her in everything else.
Sleep He goes to bed at 8pm. Sharp. Normally. He just loses it, nurses for a minute and wants to be put down. Then it's anyones guess what will happen. On bad nights he's up at 11, 1, 3, 5 and 7. On good nights like last night, he gets up at 3ish, nurses, and back to bed till 6:30-7. Naps are generally at 10a for about 1.5hours, and then sometime in the afternoon and those vary greatly in length from 15mins to 2 hours. He'll usually nurse and nap for a few minutes around 6:30 as well. If I'm desperate I can always pop him into the Lillebaby and he's out pretty fast, but it's starting to hurt my back so I don't make it a daily thing like I used to.
Names Huddie, Hudson-Budson, Huddie-Buddy (Hen calls him this), Love Bug (I usually call him this), Lover Boy, Lovie.

He's starting to come in to his own in the past few weeks. While I'm grateful to be out of the baby phase (oh, I hate the baby age!), I find myself sad it's already gone and wishing he'd stay little and snugly longer. He's already starting to push me away because he wants to explore, or expressing an opinion on his clothing (he hates sleeves...) and I can't just leave him in one spot. But somehow I already know he has my sense of humor and I can't wait to see the person he becomes. I'm looking forward to the next 6 months, these are the really fun and crazy ones!

Just a few days old

I still think we look a lot alike

Best friends (she wanted to dress alike today and picked out their monkey outfits)

Our sweet 6 monther. Without a doubt the most adorable thing you've ever seen.