this post is worth about 20k words

Somehow, it's been 6 months since our little guy came into the world. Why didn't anyone tell us it would go by so fast?! Just kidding. Everyone told us it would go by so fast and everyone was right. Since I've restrained myself from posting monthly updates/been to lazy to do it (y'all know), I'm going to indulge myself with one fatty post about my main man.

 

Anders is such a happy little guy. He's seriously so quick to smile and laugh and it's my absolute favorite thing about him. We're pretty much willing to do any ridiculous thing to get him laughing. Sometimes I don't know if he's laughing at us or laughing at us, if you know what I mean, but it don't matter.

 

kickin' it in his bouncy chair

This dude is totally a nugget. Looking at his tree trunk legs and Buddha belly you'd never guess it, but at 6 months and a little over 15 pounds, he's kind of a shrimp. Or as Adam would say, "he's just so compact!" Yeah. He's a shorty. 

little Martha Washington in the bath

Anders' pallet has recently gone for quite a ride. We started solids with him a couple of weeks ago and he's been pretty enthusiastic about food. Mostly, he enthusiastically bangs it on his tray or throws it on the floor but hey, it's a start. Also, I feel like he poops out way more solids than he takes in. Like, he'll eat 1/3 of a sweet potato strip and I'll find an entire sweet potato in his diaper? It's magic!

First taste of broccoli. I feel like we could start an "Anders is not impressed" meme here. 
He has since come around to it.

Favorites seem to be carrots and melon. I also gave him this quarter of a bagel a month ago after I hosted a brunch and had some leftover. He was weirdly into it which is excellent news for me as one of my main reasons for having kids was so that they would eat all our leftovers. 

Anders + bagel from Allison Ottley on Vimeo.

Anders is a little bookworm but only certain books, please and be sure to make the animal sounds really convincing and don't even try that paper pages crap on me because I WON'T HAVE IT! This kid's got standards! We basically read all of his Sandra Boynton books 12 times a day. It's a good thing they're catchy.

The prince condescends to allow his cousin Emma to read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar".

Anders doesn't seem too interested in becoming mobile. He didn't earn the nickname "the beached whale" for nothing. He's very content to just lay around. Not much to report here.

 

Hanging out in his Jumperoo. Or, as Anders knows it, the "Loungeroo".

Anders is a pretty popular guy. He's in very high demand and his social calendar is always packed. Luckily, he lets me tag along to take pictures of him and his friends. Clockwise from top left is:  

Anders + Will: Future hiking buddies. Yosemite 2015, Mount Rainier 2035? Will might still be squeezing into that onesie....

Anders + Sadie + their dads: Tyler is Adam's old roommate from his single in Seattle days. Here we see Anders and Sadie sleeping through their meet-cute. Oh well. 

Anders + Audrey: Adam made a good friend while working in Seattle in 2007 and they've kept in touch ever since. She and her husband had baby Audrey in March and we happened to end up in the same PEPS group since they live fairly close to us.

Anders + Oliver: Adam's co-worker had a baby 2 months after we did and I watch him during the day. So far, they're not too interested in each other but I'm looking forward to the day when they can pal around.  

 fun! fun! fun! fun! (lookin' forward to the weekend)

So, the elephant in the room is...sleep. If you must know, Anders is not sleeping through the night. As in, he has actually never slept through the night. Which means that I also haven't slept through the night since before he was born. I kind of take the blame for this a little bit. We've trained him to put himself to sleep at night but I let him eat once in the middle of the night, usually around 3. I know he'd be fine without it but we're/I'm not ready to give it up. I also know that if I feed him, I can usually get another 3 solid hours of sleep out of him, so it's a bit of a crutch. Something will probably have to change in the sleep department when we get back from vacation in a couple of weeks. 

 Sleep? I don't know the meaning of the word. 

Anders, your dad and I feel so lucky to be your parents. I don't know how we ever got along without you but we're sure glad you're ours now! Thanks for helping us figure out this parenting thing together. xoxo! (and about 1000 more x's)