Half Birthday

Wow. I cant believe Charlie is 6 months old today. It seems like only yesterday he was born. We realized at lunch today that it was his half birthday so to celebrate we drank a chocolate shake at St. Francis Fountain with the McMillan's while Charlie observed (we thought maybe making him jealous of our chocolate shake might make him enjoy rice cereal more).

Finn likes to give Charlie love-head-butt-kisses.

It's amazing how fast Charlie has grown. He has his six month check-up this week and we can hardly wait to find our how much our little guy weighs and how tall he is. Here are some fun things that happen at our house these days:

Charlie likes to look out the window and wait for mommy to get home.

He's still a big fan of the bath.

Although happy 95% of the time, he's starting to "mean-mug" sometimes.
He loves to dress fancy. Everyone who loves this shirt raise your right hand and say "I!"
He is the proud owner of a new high chair that he uses to play with toys, not to eat (mommy & daddy will prevail...you just wait).
He loves nature and open spaces. He only travels by covered wagon and already has good pioneer stories.
He loves to do push-ups with his shirt off.
(Seriously ladies, look how cute I am.)

He has a girlfriend named Berkeley (he also has a girlfriend named Olive but she moved to the mid-west...outta sight outta mind).
Other things...Charlie sleeps great sometimes and horribly other times. We're working on that. He loves to scream and squeal and can be quite loud when he wants to. Sometimes in the morning he wakes up in his crib and just hangs out in there for a while making cute noises. We love going into his room those mornings b/c his smile when he sees us is HUGE. He sits up like a total champ and rolls both ways. When you hold him on your lap he only likes to stand. He has had two colds so far and made it through both!

Back to the birthday celebration...After brunch we all went to the park and Charlie went on the swing for the first time and loved it. Take a look. (Disclaimer: This video is kind of long with lots of swinging footage.)


Liz (photographer extraordinaire) captured a few amazing stills of the big swing adventure. He was a bit nervous at first.
But then caught on rather quickly.
Probably because Finn was showing him how to do it. This picture doesn't really depict what was happening. Imagine Finn flying high and Charlie moving about 12 inches back and forth slowly. That's more accurate.


We are so happy to have this little guy in our lives. He always has a smile on his face and brings so much love, joy, fun into our lives. We still don't feel like we really know what we're doing but here we are, six months in, and we're just fine. Maybe we'll never really feel like we know exactly what we're doing and maybe that's okay. Man, we love this little guy and can't wait to see what the next six months bring. Happy half birthday Charlie!

First foods: Oatmeal

Last night we decided to try and feed Charlie something other than breast milk. Our friend Liz recommended baby oatmeal so we gave it a go. As I found out, one mixes the oatmeal with breast milk and the consistency is basically breast milk with lumps. As Betsy pointed out to me, his first meal is not really solid. I was under the impression that he was going to have a bowl of Cheerios with milk. I was totally wrong.

Things were looking promising for the first couple of spoonfuls,
but they turned bad pretty quickly.
Betsy is always the cheerleader and was very encouraging and positive.
But it was a lost cause. She would put the spoon up to his mouth, pour the oatmeal in, and the oatmeal would just run down his chin. He was super ticked.
Even though most of the delicious oatmeal landed on his shirt, he was still a happy camper in the end. We realize now last night would have been a perfect opportunity to deploy a bib.
I guess we try again tomorrow. I hope it works out.