Dear Griffin: Six Months

Dear Griffin,

Hey Grif! Sunday, June 10 was the day you turned six months old. SIX MONTHS. Wow. You celebrated the occasion by filling up a diaper with poop that ultimately ended up in your hair, ears, hands, and all over your forehead. I tried for quite some time to just clean you up but then realized it was beyond repair and I had to give you a bath to fully sanitize your little body. How did I let that happen, you may be asking? Because you are squirmy, my dear boy, and there was nothing I can do about it. It just happened. And we all had a big laugh about it. Enough about that.

I took 1.5 million pictures of you and only you throughout the last 30ish days of your life. The reason is because every single thing you did and said was beyond cute. Unfortunately, when I tried to upload them I learned that my computer only holds 10,157 pictures which means I can no longer add anymore to iPhoto without deleting old ones. But it's going to be ok, little Grif. Maybe by the time you are old enough to read this I would have taken care of the situation, but I can't and won't make any promises.

Anyway, at six months old, you are on a roll. Get it? That was a lame joke because you love to roll over and over and over and make your way from one end of the room to the other. You started rolling over when I put you to bed and now you almost exclusively sleep on your belly. There are pros and cons to this. You sleep better, I think, but you are not very good at going from your belly to your back in your crib. So when you decide it is time to switch sides, you PANIC and I have to come flop you over before you start hyperventilating . And this might happen once, twice, or eighteen times in the night. I am hoping this is a phase that promptly ends before you go to bed tonight.

One of my favorite things you do right now is the way you bounce when I hold you. I think if somebody is watching you do it, it might appear as if I am the one bouncing you, but that is not the case at all. You are doing 100% of the work. You start flapping your arms in the air like a little bird and opening your mouth as wide as you can and then moving your legs up and down all while being held and you love it! Your daddy came up with a little "Go Griffin Go" chant when you bounce and it just makes you (and me) so happy. You are so easy to please, Griffin Rice. It does not take any effort on mine or anyones part to make you smile. You love life and your smile is infectious.

You are not sitting up yet but I think you are really close. As in, maybe by the time you wake up from your nap you might be able to sit up by yourself. Well, not really. But I can tell you are using the right muscles when you try and I definitely think by the time I write your next letter you'll be as independent as a goose. A goose? Did I make that saying up? You, just like your big brother was, are very stiff. You are not a snuggler, and after many self-pity parties, I have come to terms with it. You always want to stand up on my lap and bounce and when you sit, you have perfectly stiff posture. You are absolutely not a sloucher, which can be good I suppose. But just once I would love for you to nuzzle your little cheek on my shoulder and relax. I'm hopeful that it might happen one day.

You are certainly in the taste-testing phase of your babyhood right now. Everything you touch goes straight into your mouth. This is cute, but also scary, because Clark gives you anything and everything he wants to and most of those things are not appropriate for your taste buds. For example, before I realized it, you chewed on a muddy, wet cup that had been in the back yard for months. You thought it was delicious and slobbered all over it. I love watching the taste test because its such a baby/puppy thing to do. And I love anything that reminds me that you are just a little baby and that I need to savor these little things before they are gone and you have moved on to the next cute thing. So keep taste testing away, my boy. I won't ever stop you.

Yesterday was your six month well baby visit and you weighed almost 19 pounds and are 28 inches tall. You are in the 95 percentile for height and head size. Your doctor gave you a perfect bill of health and not a day goes by that I don't thank our God for that. You still do not own any teeth and it does not appear any are coming in any time soon. You are mostly wearing nine month clothes but they are getting quite snug in your belly region. If you wear tshirts, it never fails that the shirt rides up and your giant baby belly is exposed to the whole world making you look much bigger than you really are. It's cute. This last month you had your first, and hopefully last, ear infection. You were the ultimate ear infection baby champion. You never cried about it or seemed too terribly irritated. You handled the antibiotics beautifully and now your ear is back to perfect.

My favorite memory of the last month of your life was watching you jump in your Johnny Jump Up and exhausting yourself to the point that you fell asleep right then and there in the middle of your jump session. I didn't want to wake you up, so I let you stay there and you slept for an entire hour in your Johnny Jump Up. You've done it a couple times now and I think it is hilarious. You put a lot of energy in your jumping and you take it very seriously. I took you to a meeting at our church last week and put you in a jumper thing and you jumped for about 45 minutes with no breaks. It made this loud rickety sound and the whole room could hear every single move you made and we laughed at you the whole time. We were laughing with you, not at you.

You still love to eat. The only news to report about that is that I started making your baby food and probably the only reason is because I love my Ninja food processor and blender. It may or may not save us money but I have made tons of food for you and you devour anything I put on a spoon. Before I started making your food, I knew you loved green beans. You would eat two whole jars in one sitting. I was excited to make them myself so I bought and pureed about 765 pounds of fresh green beans all for you. Well, my dear, you ate one bite of my pureed green beans and acted like I was trying to shove poop in your mouth. You hated it. So now I have about 75 ice cube trays of green bean puree in the freezer that apparently we will never use. So thanks for that. But you love everything else, mainly sweet potato, butternut squash, mango, bananas, pears, pineapple, cauliflower, and apple sauce. You no longer fit in your bumbo so I have moved you to a booster seat/high chair, and seeing you in it makes me notice how big you are getting. I don't think when we brought you home from the hospital that you would have fit in the high chair, but now you do. So that means you are getting bigger. It is such a blessing to watch you grow.

I would be a terrible person if I didn't take a moment to tell you about the relationship between you and big brother Clark. You LOVE him and he LOVES you. This is why I know he loves you: he shared his trains with you. He doesn't share his toy trains very well, not even with his best friends, so to see him give you a train makes me believe that he absolutely adores you. He loves to make you laugh and knows how to do so very well. When he gets you laughing it is hilarious. The sound of your laugh is so funny, kind of goofy, and very nerdy. He will just make these random noises and say made up words in weird voices and you laugh like he is the funniest thing you've ever seen in your life, which is probably the case, actually. When we are in the car, the two of you just stare at each other and talk the whole time. And when you start to doze off, he will scream in your ear because he knows I don't want you to fall asleep in the car. He is the first person you see every day because he loves to see "Griffin little guy" or "Little Griffin guy" or "Little guy Griffin" when you wake up. He has made up an entire litany of nicknames for you. He is still fairly rough with you but none of it phases you. He will lay all over you, roll you all over the house, sit on you, smother you in kisses, and you will just watch him and smile. It is as if he has been waiting and waiting for the day to come when he can actually play with you, and the day has come. I love watching y'all together. I realize a day might come when the two of you don't get along, so I'm storing up in my mind like treasure all the sweet moments you have right now.

 

 

Griffin, you are such an easy going baby. It is your fault that I want to have five or ten more babies. You are so fun, easy, handsome, loving, laughable, and Clark, your daddy, and I love every second we get to spend with you. I just can't believe you are six months old. Time is flying by with wings. But I am positive that the best is yet to come. Your personality is growing like wildfire. You are learning new things and growing before my very eyes. You contribute so much to our lives and in mine and your daddy's eyes, you are perfect. I love you so much and always will. No matter what.

Love,
Mom