The Benson Family: Chandler is 6 Months!

6 Month Percentiles:

Height: 26.75 in - 60%

Weight: 17 lbs 4 oz - 60%

Head: 17.5 in - 70%

When did this happen? And how do I make it stop?!

Not that I don't love every. single. stage, but I just feel like it's flying by way too fast and want a little more time to soak it all in so I can remember every detail. It's so amazing to see the\is little person slowly develop more and more personality and skills. I love watching him take in the world and get excited over every new thing he sees. I also love being the center of his world right now (I know, so egocentric) but it's so sweet to have someone completely dependent on you and look at you with such pure unconditional love in their bright blue eyes.

Chandler has officially reached his first stage of mobility. I wrote awhile back about how he had learned to roll front to back. A couple of weeks ago, he started rolling back to front. And now he is like a little traveling circus. He rolls both ways to get himself around from A to B. So now I have to watch him way more carefully to keep him away from things he's not supposed to have. I have found him chewing on the leg of a coffee table and trying to shove himself under a chair. This kid will put anything in his mouth. Which leads to me to...

A few weeks ago, Chandler's first little tooth popped through! So far, he actually has done a great job with teething and hasn't been very fussy. There have been a few times that he would be completely asleep and waking up wailing like he was in extreme pain, but as soon as I give him some Orajel he calmed down and drifted back to sleep. The biggest symptom of teething we have been seeing around here is buckets and buckets of drool. He would soak the neckline of his clothes within moments of me getting him dressed. Then, not long after that first tooth peeked through, tooth #2 came in! My baby has two bottom teeth! I was resistant at first because I love his little gummy mouth, but his smile is so ridiculously cute with those 2 little chompers that I have since been placated. He always sticks his tongue out when I try to get a picture of his teeth so I had to get it while he was sleeping. The resulting picture is a little scary, but they're kind of showing...the picture quality isn't the best.

Chandler has now begun to try to sleep on his side more and more. At first, this nervous mommy would come in and move him to his back (I rank pretty high on the paranoia scale) but I'm adjusting.

Baby boy's fine motor skills are getting better and better. He grabs toys off the ground while he's rolling around and loves to bang them, bring them up to his face to get a closer look, and then stick them in his mouth. For a long time, he would keep pulling his passie out of his mouth but couldn't get it back in and would start fussing and it would drive me crazy because he would just do it again right after I gave it back. But now he's getting increasingly better at being able to put it back in. He's even reached out on the floor or bed, grabbed it, and stuck it in his mouth. If the nipple of the passie isn't facing the right way to begin with, he turns it in his hands til he gets it the right way. Or sometimes he like to scrape his little teeth across the button on the back. The front part of all his passies are scratched up now.

He loves his baby friend that looks just like him and lives in the mirror. When I'm getting ready, I'll lay a blanket with toys on the floor. My closet doors are sliding mirrors and he always rolls over there to knock on the doors and play with his friend.

Chandler still does his high pitched shriek when he is excited and babbling. The other day in the store he did this over and over and I'm sure people thought I was doing something to terrify my poor baby. Nope...that's just his way. But he has also picked up on other things to babble. He says "babababababababa" a lot. Towards the beginning of August, when he cried he would say "mamamamama!" I know it wasn't intentional, but I love it anyway. There was a time, though, when I was out at dinner with my parents and Halston and I was feeding him some baby food while we waited for our food to come. I got distracted with talking and hadn't given him a bite in awhile when all of a sudden he yelled "MAMA!" I'm not crazy....my parents and Halston heard it, too. Anyways, in the last couple of days he has started babbling "mamammaa" more and more and it melts my heart. I love it when he's nursing and then he'll break away and look me right in the eye and talk to me with this really serious face and then turn back like he got his point across or grins like we just had a delightful exchange and continue eating.

Chandler is strong. The doctors and nurses at his pediatrics office have also commented on this several times. He has these little legs of steel that can kick super hard. He's also super fast, which has made for a dangerous combo. If you bring something close to him, he'll have a hold of it before you can even blink. More often than not, this will be my hair. I think this kid has literally pulled out fistfulls of it. Here's what a water bottle looked like after he was finished with it:

I've started making Chandler's baths a little more exciting for him. I put him in the little bath lounger and then fill the tub up with water til it's about at his waist. He splashes and kicks and goes crazy! (And don't worry, I watch him like a hawk.) So he is still a water baby. We took him to the waterpark this past weekend and he loved splashing and staring at the waterfalls and kicking. His expression is so funny, too; instead of smiling and laughing he has this expression on his face like he is really busy and completely consumed in what he is doing. It's hilarious.

It's now easier to get Chandler to laugh. He laughs all the time. But every single time he does laugh he inevitably get the hiccups. Every. Time.

We finally decided to give him some fruits and I had the camera all ready to get his excited reaction on video. I spooned the first bite of apples into his mouth and it may as well have been peas. This baby will just eat anything. One time Josh and I even gave him the tiniest bite of ice cream and he didn't react any differently.
He just likes everything. Hopefully this is a trait that sticks...that will make cooking dinner in the future really nice and easy.

Chandler has finally discovered his feet! When he is on his back he will grab his toes and look around. When I hand him a toy, he will grab onto it with both his hand and feet. It's pretty adorable.