And we finally got the pictures back from Calvin's six month photo shoot, which was also our family Christmas photo shoot. These are some of our favorites, and you can see all of them in the Calvin's six month photo shoot album.
family, holidays, photography Babies love other babies, or so we had heard. It wasn't until more recently, however, that Calvin really started to interact with other little munchkins more his size. Cortney and Calvin went on a field trip today to spend some time with a new mom and baby who needed some uplifiting words and a little advice (those first three weeks can be hard). 
Cortney's friend, Becky, and her daughter, Liesl, were a big part of this outing, too, and Calvin really seemed to make a connection with Liesl while we were there. Of course, he's seen her numerous times in the past, but this time he really seemed to be communicating with her, even if she was too busy to care much. He was clearly very intrigued, and perhaps a bit perplexed, by her ability to move about so easily. We have a feeling that if he spends too much time with her his snail paced commando crawl will become a full fledged crawl that much faster!
friends 
We moved on to peas today! And by "we" we mean Calvin, of course, although it was a family affair. We started with fresh frozen (we can get into the validity of that supermarket lingo later) peas, which looked appetizing enough to us and steamed them. Post steam treatment they were still looking pretty yummy. Then we transferred said peas to a blender and "liquefied" them 
(a process that is not as simple as the"liquefy"button on your blender will have you believe). Then, as if liquefying was not inhumane enough, we mixed the now pasty peas with some of the water they were steamed in and a bit of breast milk. At this point the peas had passed into a food state that only one out of three of us could even possibly find appealing and, with fingers crossed, we let him try them. The good news is, he seemed to enjoy them. The bad news is, he enjoyed them enough to share with his bib, his clothing, his highchair...
parenting Our favorite new advancement is by far Calvin's new 
peek-a-boo playing skill, but there are two other fun ones now, too. At his checkup on Monday, Calvin's doctor told us to go ahead and increase the number of times he got solids during the day, so now he eats when we eat, and that makes for a fun family dinner. We are even starting to get smiles out of him while he eats, though most of the time he seems to think it's a very serious undertaking.
The second new trick of which we spoke is one that strikes fear in our hearts - 
he is now able to get up on all fours, and thus is that much closer to crawling! Thankfully it is still likely that he will wait until the Christmas tree is gone, but that still means we have a lot of child proofing to do, since we have naively been putting it off. Check out this week's (his 27th week) photos to see the sequence of pictures showing how he gets into this crawling position - it's not via the traditional tummy time lift, it's Calvin's own personal way of doing things (the doctor did describe him as willful).
life, milestones, parenting Calvin had his 6 month visit with the doctor today and came home with a clean bill of health! He is still struggling a bit to make up the weight he lost when he had the reflux trouble several weeks ago. In fact, he weighed no more today than he did two months ago at the four mnth checkup - 17.25 lbs. He is longer, though, now measuring just over 27 inches. The doctor was not worried about his lack of weight gain - between his recent trouble with the reflux and his more active state it is not surprising. The doctor was very impressed with Calvin's motor skill development, though, and told us that Calvin is doing the things that a normal 9 month old should be doing! He was particularly impressed with Calvin's peek-a-boo skills, which is our favorite advancement, too. There was really only one surprise about today, and that is the fact that Calvin seemed to have no reaction to the vaccines at all! Even though he actually got one more vaccine than in previous appointments (the flu shot being teh new addition), he was just like himself all afternoon!
And there is one more update to share: On Saturday we tried again to introduce Calvin to cereal. It went much better this time around. He opened his mouth every time he saw the spoon come out of the dish, and he finished the whole thing. Later this week we will try introducing him to veggies and see how that goes!
development, milestones, parenting