6 Month Stats

We took Jack for his 6 month well visit today. He's very healthy, and everything checked out great. He was in the 90th percentile for his height (27 3/4 inches) and weight (19 lbs. 7 oz.). He got two shots, but they don't seem to be bothering him much so far. No more shots until his 9 month visit. Yeah!!!

Colin got the news today that he did fabulous on his promotional test that he has been preparing for now for quite some time. We're so proud of him. :)

***Update for clarification: Mike and Colin built the new deck that I wrote about in my last post. Bruce was the job foreman. No labor for him still since he is recovering from back surgery.***

And some pictures that I just uploaded from my phone...

Loving the water

Pulling Kaelan's ear

My big boy cubbies jammies

Sitting in a puddle watching the big kids play in the splash zone at Sea World. My buddy, Kaelan, is the one in the white shirt.

Playing with my toys on the floor

Favorite pictures from the week

Laughing with my grandma :)

Happy guy! You can see the little tooth sprouting through on his left side if you look closely (as well as peaches in the nostril!).

Drinking out of my sippy cup. Jack has taken 2 bottles every day while I've been at work for the past several months. Well, now that I've been home with him, it hasn't been necessary for him to have any bottles. Apparently, he has decided to stop drinking from a bottle altogether. Colin and I went to Tampa for several hours earlier in the week, and he wouldn't take a bottle!! He held himself over until I could feed him by eating 3 1/2 jars of baby food! So I decided this was as good of a time as any to transition him to the sippy cup. So far he's had water, but we haven't tried giving him any milk in it yet. He's been doing really well with it though, so I'm not anticipating any problems. 

Loves being part of the conversation. Hanging out on the porch and talking!

Colin and my dad decided to take down the screened-in porch and replace the tiles with a wooden deck. They've been working on it all day in the heat. This is my mom, Roi, and Jack watching from inside.

:)

Starting the project

My first time swimming.

The first time I went swimming, I got to do it with my buddy, Kaelan. What fun!!

I'm going to be a water bug. Loved kicking, splashing, and I even went under!!

Best buds

Playing with my new toy that Uncle Mike brought me. Thanks Uncle Mike. I love it!

Love being up on my daddy's shoulders.

Reaching for my 1/2 birthday cake while everyone sang Happy Birthday!

The 1/2 birthday cake

Love my Gramps

Having a sink bath. Baths are becoming more common now that he is eating baby food. What a mess!

My auntie Courtney carried me all night. I was so tired from not taking any naps that day! Didn't want to miss out on any of the excitement.

In front of an ice bar that we found on International Drive. :)

Funny!

My dad and me.

This was before we went to see The Hangover. Hilarious movie!!!

Imitating Grandma Heide's gestures while she tells a story.

Laughing at my silly auntie

Courtney and me

Loving my Johnny Jump Up

**OKAY, so I had a hard time choosing a few favorites....

6 Months

Jack turned six months old (HALF OF AN ENTIRE YEAR!!!) on June 23rd. Everyone told us that time will go so fast. EVERYONE said that. Well that has definitely proven to be true. I just cannot believe it's been six months. He is changing so much and getting so big! Colin and I recently did a sweep of several of his infant things that he's outgrown. We cleaned out his swing, infant seat, and lots of clothes that he has grown too big for. 

To celebrate the last sixth months, I made a 1/2 birthday cake. If you are wondering, I didn't let him try any of it. I did get some pictures of it though. I'll be posting lots of pictures later next week when I get a chance to get them uploaded onto the computer. We've been keeping busy having Grandma and Grandpa Heide here plus Auntie Courtney earlier in the week (love having them here!). I want to gather pictures from all of our cameras and share my favorites. In the meantime, I just wanted to share some of the new things that Jack has been up to lately. Courtney's pictures are on facebook if you want to see a few.

-He waves now. It's by far my favorite trick of his. Sometimes he doesn't do it, but if he is in the right mood, and you wave to him, he will wave back. 

-He went swimming for the first time today. The Fulmers are in town, so we went to their condo today and spent a couple of hours at the pool. Grandpa took Jack into the pool, and he absolutely LOVED being in the water. He was splashing all over the place and laughing the whole time. Again, pictures to come. Next week we will be visiting Grandma and Grandpa Moller at their Venice condo, so I'm sure he will hit up the pool again and love it!

-We recently had to adjust his crib to the lower setting because he was caught pulling himself up against the railing!! He's getting so strong and is very determined to get where he wants to go.

-He crawls around and can move from crawling position to sitting position and vice versa. 

-He's trying so hard to pull up on everything...the ottoman, his toy basket, the couch, your leg, etc. I had him in his bath seat today, and he got up on his knees to reach for something on the ledge of the bath tub!!!

-He's been eating three meals a day of baby food. So far he's had peaches, applesauce, pears, green beans, and sweet potatoes. He definitely prefers fruits to veggies! We are going to try to push the veggies, but he always makes an awful face when he gets a bite of veggies. He still has milk every 3-4 hours as well. 

-He has just sprouted his first tooth. It's just a tiny bud on the bottom left. I can see that the right one will be cutting through soon. He had a rough few days where he was in quite a bit of pain from the tooth. :(

-He recently has been taking EXTREMELY short naps, if any at all! I really can't complain because the kid has slept 10-12 hours a night from the time he was about six weeks old, but seriously... He has been fighting nap time like crazy! He just wants to party all day long!!!

-His personality continues to be very happy, go with the flow, and ACTIVE! He loves when he does something that makes people laugh, and he loves attention. When you carry him, he loves to face outward because he needs to be able to see everything. He doesn't want to miss a thing, and he wants to be involved and a part of whatever is going on. :)

-He says consonant vowel words such as dadadada, mamamama, babababa, ada, gagaga.

That's about all I can think of for now. Colin and I have thoroughly enjoyed the last sixth months. We can't even put into words the love that we feel for him. He brings so much joy and happiness to our lives. He is such a perfect addition to our family, and we love watching him learn and grow everyday. We are beyond blessed and very thankful that we get to be his parents. What a special gift he is!

Sixth months ago, this little guy took over our hearts forever!!

Ticklish

Enjoy! :)

Jack can sit up now!

Jack went to get his five month shots today. Colin weighed him (dressed), and he is about 19 lbs. 3 oz. now. :) His newest milestone is that he can now sit up for short periods of time. How fun!

Taking off before bath time

"People let me tell ya bout my beeeest friend!"

Jack loves looking at the computer! I think he's looking for his grandparents on the webcam!!

Now that he can sit up, we decided to try out his high chair. We can officially start having family dinners now. :)

Once we put him in his seat, Colin and I both started clapping and saying how big of a boy he is. He was so proud of himself. He just looked at us with a huge smile. Love that gummy grin!

Still happy!

Where's my dinner!?

Firefighter Combat Challenge

Wahoo! Two consecutive days of blogging! Here are some pictures from the Firefighter Combat Challenge that Colin and some of his coworkers competed in last weekend. They each had an event that they were responsible for doing. Each team was timed on how long it took them to complete the course. I think they got 1:42 and 1:45 for their times. Those times were good enough to qualify for the National Championship competition, which will take place in Las Vegas this November. We are all hoping that they get to go!! That would be lots of fun. 

Getting ready for his event, the Keiser sled. He had to straddle a contraption that had a metal beam going down the center. Then he would bang on the piece with this hammer (a.k.a. Keiser sled), trying to move the piece to a certain distance. That's about the best I can do at describing it. If I had The Flip camcorder (hint, hint Colin!!!!!!!!!!!!), I could have put some video up from him in action.

Colin and his friend after they finished

Jack and I watching and cheering Daddy on from the bleachers.

Colin in action

They did a write-up in the newspaper about it. One of my student's moms works for the city where Colin works, and she sent this in for me. Hopefully you can click on it to make it bigger, but I'm not sure if that will work!

New Guest Bathroom and Funny Pictures of Jack

This is a picture of our guest bathroom before we decided to do some updating to it:

Colin is just about completely done with the bathroom project, so I thought I'd post some before and after pictures. The before picture is above...lots of white along with the star shaped nobs! :) He did a fabulous job, and it looks so good! Jack will love his new bathroom, plus I'm sure our guests will like the updated look as well! The only thing left is to put in the accessories, like the towel rack, wall hanging, and things like that.

I can't put up a post and not share some pictures of the little man! My neighbor, Patty, emailed me this picture a few days ago. I know this sounds vain, but I don't mean it in that way... I just can't believe I had that much water retention!!! My nose is at least double its normal size! But, this picture is very special to me because it's our first family picture that we had (besides the one of the 3 of us when I was still on the operating table).

Here is the Jackster enjoying his new bath seat. I was pouring water out of his cup, and he was watching it. He loves bath time every evening. He's starting to play with his bath toys as well as splash. So cute!

The poor little guy has had a low grade fever and runny nose the past couple of days. Colin has had a cold, so maybe Jack caught it. As far as I know, this was his first fever, so I was a little worried. I had him sleep in bed with us the first night. Colin said that he kept cuddling up next to him. Then, he would move him in the middle, and sure enough, Jack would make his way back right next to his dad. That was a cycle all night long. Needless to say, neither of them got enough sleep that night. I, on the other hand, slept right through it all. When the next night rolled around and he still had a fever, I wanted him in there with us again. Only that night it was me who he was rolling up against all night. So around 2:00 Colin put him back in his crib. He slept soundly for the rest of the night. I guess I learned that he definitely sleeps best in his crib! This is how I found him when I went in to wake him up this morning. He has his butt up in the air, and he's on his knees. When I took his sleep sack off, he had a red circle on each knee, so he must've been like that for a while! :) 

This picture cracks me up. Jack was laying on the living room floor playing with some toys. We oftentimes will lay a blanket out with some toys and he just entertains himself while we eat dinner or clean up the house. He has been rolling and "crawling" like crazy lately. I left to start his bath water, and when I came back he had rolled himself up in this blanket. I thought that was so funny!

On another note, SCHOOL'S OUT!! I'm so happy to be on summer break. I remember when I had to go back to work after my maternity leave, I said that I couldn't wait until June 5th. Now it's here! We have lots of fun things planned. Have a good weekend!!!