Matthew: Six Months!

Height/Weight: You'd think that after four kids I'd be better able to analyze the physical appearance of my kid. Apparently not, though, because my estimations about Matthew at five months could not have been more inaccurate. While it is maybe true that our scale put him at 16 pounds at five months, either our scale is off or his weight gain slowed drastically between five and six months because at his well visit he weighed in a 16 pounds, 7 ounces. Which puts him as the lightest of the three boys. However, Matthew came in at 26.7 inches tall, and only Garrett was taller at six months (and not by much!). So maybe I'm just imagining the fact that the has rolls? Because with a height in the 53rd percentile and a weight in the 28th percentile you'd think he'd look more like a bean pole than a roly poly chunk, but I swear he's the latter. 

Wearing: Well, I finally bought my first box of size three diapers for Matthew--but only because they were on sale and we still had a box and a half of size two diapers for him. We're finally down to the last couple dozen of size two diapers, and while they generally seem to be fitting just fine, he does wet them substantially overnight, so I'm hopeful that I won't need to change the size three diapers in the middle of the night like I do the size two ones (and honestly, I've considered putting him in different sizes for night and day, but keeping track of that just seems like too much work). A few weeks ago I did start to pull some 3-6 month outfits out of his closet because they were too small, but I haven't really needed to add 6-9 month clothes into the mix yet because he has plenty of 3-6 month stuff that still fits (#fourthboy #handmedowns). I'll probably go through the 6-9 month tote soon, though, if for no other reason than I want to get the "summer" stuff in his closest so he has a few opportunities to wear the pieces before fall gets here (how is it already August in a few days?!?)

Eating: Well, it was bound to happen. We made such an effort with all the boys to nurse exclusively for the first six months, but Matthew just refused to let that happen. A few days before we officially started solid foods with him, he was sitting on Darrell's lap while I was finishing getting dinner on the table and he stole the hoagie roll right off of Darrell's plate and immediately shoved it into his mouth. Darrell was able to salvage most of the roll, but we allowed him to keep the balled up drooled on piece that he was clutching in his hands, and he happily sucked on it the entire meal--which, for the record, is the most content he had been at the table in weeks. Suffice to say this kid is ready for something other than Momma's milk. He did continue to have a couple of rough stretches with nursing in the past month, mostly in that he only wanted to nurse for a minute or two and then refused any more--which then resulted in some not so great naps--but (knock on wood) I think we're past that.

Sleeping: So here's the thing. My other boys were pretty much consistently bad sleepers--at six months they were all getting up twice a night, and most nights, more than that. But because it was constant, my body must have gotten used to it or something. However, the nights that Matthew gets up twice are AWFUL. And honestly, twice is pretty much the max. Most nights it's only once, and we even occasionally get a night where he sleeps from 8 pm to 7 am. So really, comparatively, I should be doing fine... But I'm not. It's like my body can't figure out a "good" sleep cycle and as such I'm always getting interrupted in the deepest part of a cycle. And it sucks. Naps are improving slightly, which helps, but it's far from every day that he naps well and even then I maybe get one decent nap out of the whole day. I've complained to Darrell more than once that this whole thing isn't "fair"--with the older boys I hated letting them cry so I inevitably created bad sleep crutches which resulted in babies who weren't the best sleepers, and with Matthew I've been trying So.Hard to let him cry more and self soothe and he still isn't as good of a sleeper as I would hope, which makes me feel even worse when he cries because it seems like it isn't doing anything anyway. Which rationally, I know isn't really true, and rationally, he is consistently better than the other boys were, but ugh--the fact that he can be soooo inconsistent from one day/night to the next is brutal. My body never has any idea what is coming--and factor in the needs of three other boys and my brain is just crazy over-taxed. But, like everything, this too shall pass. So we'll get through it. 

New Stuff: Well, if I had to speak for Matthew, I'd say the biggest excitement of the past month is that he discovered his penis. The kid loves nothing more than to play with himself, and the minute his diaper is off (sometimes even before), he's got at least one hand grabbing on to it (which, as you can well imagine, makes changing poopy diapers incredibly difficult). Since he has pretty well mastered sitting he has joined Garrett and Connor in the bathtub, which basically just turns in to another opportunity for him to hold on to his penis (#boymomproblems). So that's been fun. We celebrated his first 4th of July (at least to the extent that we could being stuck at home and only allowed to be at the cabin for one day of the long weekend), but at least he was able to get in the lake for the first time on the day we were down there, so I suppose that redeemed the celebration a little bit. 

He's starting to develop an awareness for people and places--William can almost always get big smiles and giggles out of Matthew with little effort; Garrett can do the same thing as William but gets much less of a reaction, probably because Matthew knows there is a much greater chance of Garrett being too rough with him than William (to Garrett's defense, he just loves Matthew SOOOO much and can't not be playing with him/carrying him/repositioning him, but I definitely think it wears on Matthew). He is also very aware of his nursery and generally fusses when we take him in there because he knows that it means nap time. Unfortunately, he is also very loud (like seriously--always SO LOUD), which has resulted in him waking Connor up early from his nap a few times. So that's fun. 

All in all, it's been a pretty wonderful half a year with this kiddo. It's definitely not the way I expected the first six months of his life to go (#covidsucks), but we've made the best of it and he's definitely made the journey worth our while. And as much as I love his squishy baby rolls and sloppy wet baby kisses, I'm excited to see his personality continue to develop as he grows. Just not too fast, of course.