Oh My Gosh. Six months have flown by. Actually I just took Hue’s seven month pictures, so seven months have actually passed by. Let’s take a look at each month!

Zero Months. OMG. I cannot even handle this picture. Hue is 4 days old here. This month Hue is just all about being adorable and we are all about learning to be parents. This is when I really understand that there is a new normal. Watching a 1 hour tv show now takes 2.5 hours – or even more so you just don’t finish it because you were only able to half watch it anyways. This is when you wonder if you will ever get to sleep more than 2 hours in a row. Doing things like taking a shower become more complicated – where do you put the baby? The earliest we can get out of the house is around 2pm. Breast feeding is only awesome because the weight is dropping so fast. I only gained the weight of Hue so when he was born I lost the 12 lbs. I gained right away. And that weight gain was weird because when I was pregnant with Hue, one checkup I would be down a pound or two and the next checkup I maybe would be the same or gain a pound. But overall I was 12 lbs. heavier at the time of Hue’s birth. I stopped breast feeding by the end of the first month. It was so time consuming and hard by myself. Hue was super gassy and I was pumping and dumping a lot. I dumped for Indian Food I thought might be too spicy, I was just so cautious of everything I consumed. I felt so guilty that I might be causing his gas pain. Formula was so much easier. His gassiness was controllable on it. The down side was the automatic weight dropping stopped. Overall life was changing for us new parents and Hue is so worth the sleepless nights and my body that is healing from the c-section.

One month old Hue! I already miss this tiny little guy. At this stage – Hue slept A LOT. He hadn’t really smiled at us. He was just getting use to his surroundings. We made up a term – sleating, it’s when you sleep and eat at the same time. My niece came up with it. It’s when someone asks, “Is Hue asleep?” and you say, “No, he’s sleating.”  We still this use this term today.

We made some slight changes when Hue came to join our family. The first change is that we started to eat at the table together as a family. We would put Hue in the bouncer on the table and he would just hang out as we ate. I really liked this new change. We used to sit on the couch around the coffee table watching a show on TV. Now we actually talk to each other. Jake took off the first two weeks of Hue’s life to be with us. We changed EVERY. SINGLE. diaper together. We actually did everything together. We drove in the car together. We made decisions together – Is it okay to take him to a park when he’s a week old? The answer is yes. Can I leave him on the couch in his donut pillow while I grab something from the kitchen? Yes but risky. I felt so incredibly close to Jake at this moment in time. We were (still are!) in this together. Jake would run to the grocery store to get something for us and I would say things like, “Hurry back!”. I was never this person, always fine on my own but now, I, we were responsible for this tiny little human and I was slightly terrified of being with him all by myself. Our main focus with Hue was focusing on his sleeping, eating, and diapers – repeat all day and night long. Jake would hang out with us in the middle of the night in this first month, it would take us like two hours to feed Hue in the middle of the night. Everyone we know have come to visit us! They all love Hue so much. I just look back at this time as a really special time.

Month two. It’s now just Hue and I during the week days. I am focusing on getting better. My c-section scar is still really tender and I am still a little weak. I am walking every day at Balboa Park with Hue. Pushing him around in his infant seat/stroller. He is sleeping the whole time while we walk around the lake and I take advantage and catch up on some of my favorite podcasts!  I take him to the grocery store for the first time by myself. I am carrying him in an Ergo on my chest as I push the cart. Random strangers are coming up to me to tell me to enjoy this time, it’s such a special time, and I agree with them every single time. I am still on maternity leave but I know that time is coming to an end soon and I am starting to get pings of heartbreak thinking I have to go back to work. Hue is sleeping a lot still. I have taken him on his first hike to Runyon Canyon. He has had his first playdate ever with my best friend who is a nanny to her sister’s two daughters. I know everyone (since 7th grade) and it feels very safe. On the weekends we go out together as a family. Since I am off during the week I go grocery shopping sometime during the week so we have more family time on the weekends. Jake and I use to go together every Sunday but that is just another habit that has changed since Hue has arrived. We would find places we could walk around at with the stroller- we did a lot of this.

Month three. Hue is starting to show off a little. He is very tall. He’s in the 98% range for height. He is average everywhere else. He is long and lean. I am waiting for this chubby baby to form but all I see is a long body with a six pack. Jake keeps asking where this baby came from. He doesn’t understand how we got such a happy and tall and skinny baby! We are not overly happy people and we definitely wouldn’t be described as “long and lean”. He is turning over in his crib. We have just moved him from a bassinet in our room at the end of our bed to his own crib/room. I called his pediatrician in a panic the first day he had rolled over in his sleep. She was like he’s starting early but that is fine. I was so worried about his limbs falling through the cribs bars and him suffocating but he was fine. She had us get him a sleep sack where his arms were free. It worked wonders. It’s supposed to feel like he is still in the womb but I think it felt like an everywhere blanket.

Month Four. My inlaws came to visit from the east coast. Hue loved meeting his extended family! We went out a lot during that time. Hue visited his daddy at work for the first and so far only time. We went to the Getty Villa in Malibu, which is so pretty. Hue also started to eat food this month! His first foods were pureed organic sweet potato, organic brown rice, banana, and organic steamed apples.At this stage, we were just introducing the idea of food to him. He liked his first new to him foods.

Month five. Hue has since tried broccoli which he gagged at but to be fair I included the stocks which I personally love but I think might have been too much for him. I am going to try again without the stocks. He has tried avocado which he hates. He gags every time. I stir some peanut butter in his organic brown rice puree. His pediatrician suggested we introduce peanut butter early to try to avoid allergies. The first time is scary to give it to him but he was fine. He loves carrots not so into butternut squash but he will tolerate it.He loves ground up oatmeal. HE LOVES WATER. He cannot get enough of it – to the point that he chokes on it.

Hue is now crawling and pulling himself up! He is flopping around when he crawls and he is falling as soon as he pulls himself up but it feels like the beginning to so much more. He is much more aware of his surroundings. I was putting him to bed one night and noticed he was starting to actually look at the space shapes in his wallpaper behind his crib. It was neat to see him notice something for the first time that had been there all along. He is starting to be much more verbal. It’s a lot of screeching and babbling on the way to him finding his voice but I’ll take it.

.

Month Six. I turned 41 during this time and on my birthday he figured out “peek-a-boo” which we lovingly call “peek-a-Hue”. He just started burying his head in my chest and I’d say, “Where’s Hue?” over and over again, when I actually looked at him he was in a fit of giggles and it was the cutest thing EVER. We play this game a lot still, especially in the car when he is cranky. Anything to hear him giggle.We just got him a new car seat that grows with him and he is still adjusting to this new car seat. Car rides are becoming a little more challenging these days especially when it’s just Hue and I. We have had to baby proof the whole house. He is a master crawler and is standing for tiny moments on his own without holding on to anything but will quickly fall. He notices his daddy when Jake walks through the door from work. It is the cutest thing ever. If he has a bottle in his mouth he pushes it out just to stand up so he can make sure his daddy can see him well. It’s SO cute. Everything he does right now is adorable. For every adorably cute moment there is an exhausted, almost hanging on moment waiting around the corner. I love hanging out with him all the time. He is starting to put his arms out for me which tugs at my heart every time he does it. I am exactly where I need to be in this moment in life and loving even the bumpy parts.