Growing like a weed

Note: Not 'growing weed'. I may be a bit bored, but not thaaat bored :)

Anyways, I am referring to Mr. Baby of course!  I have a lot to catch up on given my blogging hiatus for that 6 or 7 week period.  So to start with, the bubba is really rather large.  He weighed 7.4kg and was 69cm long at his 4 month check up. At his 6 month check up a week and a half ago he weighed in at 8.4kg and was 72cm long!  So he is the top 5% or something for his length (about the 95th percentile) and in the 75th percentile for his weight.  So he is certainly fat and happy.  Just how babies should be!

He achieved a number of milestones while I was truant from the blogging world: most notable is that he started to roll over at the 5 month mark (just before Christmas).  He is so pleased with himself every time he does it - it really makes me laugh!  Here he is post-roll:

Interestingly, the doctor at his 6 month check up told me that most babies first learn to roll from their front onto their backs.  Our little guy has started the other way!  I have never seen him roll from his front onto his back even once. I don't think he has realised he can go back the other way!  Or maybe he just doesn't want to.  Regardless, it's actually good because he can't roll away anywhere yet :)  He is extremely anxious to be mobile though.  He manages to move in a circle on his tummy but gets very frustrated that he can't just go where he wants to.  I hope this doesn't mean he will be an early crawler - I feel tired just thinking about chasing after him then!  We have bought the baby gates though to make sure we are prepared for it.

Another new thing has been moving from having his bath in the laundry tub (much easier on mummy's back than one of those baby baths....) to being in the big bath.  He just got too long to fit in the sink so now he has fun splashing all over the place and loves it!  He also recently got a chance to have a swim in a paddle pool at my parents' place.  He is definitely a water baby - check out how chilled out he is here:

I love this photo as it looks like he should be saying "Heeeey, how you doin'?"  A very smooth operator there.  

We have also started him on solid food.  Needless to say, when you are the parent of a baby who is in the 90-odd percentile for height, it's a given that the kid likes his food!  He eats with gusto and ever since the first meal he has been opening his mouth ready for the next spoonful.  He actually gets frustrated if you take too long to get it to him! He has two meals a day now - pureed fruit mixed with rice cereal for brekkie, and veggies, sometimes with meat mixed in, at dinner time.  My husband even makes the pureed food himself now. 

We went around to about a dozen different stores the other week as he looked for a "food mill" to make the baby's food with.  Turns out they don't call them a food mill in Australia so it was no wonder that no one knew what he was asking for and didn't have one!  They call them a "moulie" here. No idea where the weird word came from but thank goodness the lady at David Jones knew what he was asking for when he described what he wanted to do with it. I think we would have been looking for weeks otherwise - he was really set on getting one!  Which is kind of funny since a blender does exactly the same thing and we already own one of those.  Especially interesting when you consider that I wanted to buy one of those baby bath seats for the little guy but was told that he could "lie on his back for free"!!  Some battles are not worth fighting though :)  So now we are the proud owners of a moulie/food mill....

The last thing I will add here on this post (as it really is getting a bit long!) is how much the baby LOVES his jumper!  He gets so excited to go in it and jumps around so much in it.  And that means I love it too as anything that keeps him happy, keeps me happy :)