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Sunshine! Although we had kind of forgotten what it looked like, we are now looking up in the sky to see a blazing star shining down on us. The summer has finally arrived in Washington, and Noah’s finally getting to enjoy what it means to be outside.  He’s discovering all sorts of new textures: water, grass, sand, and rocks.

A week ago, he got his first exposure to the pool.  I was a bit hesitant to see how he’d handle it since he hated having his face get wet in the bath. But it was a hot day and we needed the refreshment.  I carefully loaded up all of his stuff and we were rewarded!  Noah really enjoyed it.  There were a few kids in the pool who were splashing water everywhere, and Noah realized that if the big kids can have fun getting splashed, then it must be fun for him too.  Consequently, his baths are much easier now, and he loves the water.

We got to go in again later that weekend when Uncle Loren was around.  Here are some pictures of us having fun in the water.

We also got to go outside and crawl around the apartment grounds. I brought a blanket for him to play on, but he is so mobile that he was off of it in no time. The grass was much more interesting to him.

This last Saturday, we went to the Edmonds beach where the ferry comes and goes. We didn’t get any pictures from this trip, but he got to play in the grass and sand there as well. He loved watching the waves and looking at all the people that were there.

Another shiny thing that Noah now has his first TOOTH! It is located on the bottom left, and it came in yesterday as we were having lunch with some friends. There was a little bit of blood =(, but he did really well despite the pain. Getting a picture of it will be quite the challenge, but stay posted.

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Happy 1/2 Birthday Noah!

Today Noah is 6 months old.  In some ways, it feels like we brought him home from the hospital yesterday, but in most ways, it seems like he’s been in our lives forever.  We are so blessed to have him in our lives.

Well, what has our 1/2 year old been doing lately?  Well, he’s moving all over now.  He’s mastered rolling over both ways, and he can scoot to almost anywhere he wants to go (scary!).  He’s getting close to crawling as he gets on his hands and knees and rocks back and forth.

He also learned to share today.  As we were playing on the bed, he took his pacifier out of his mouth and proceeded to stick it right into mine!  He didn’t seem to understand that I didn’t want it.  I think we are going to have to learn some moderation in sharing.  =)

In other news, he is sleeping better.  We tried for a while to follow the methods from the book, The Sleepeasy Solution.  It worked for about a week, but some of the drawbacks caused us to rethink it, so we’ve gone back to rocking him and slowly putting him in his crib.  He’s doing a lot better though now, and he will sleep at least one stretch for 5-6 hours.   Much more desirable than the waking every 1-2 hours that he was doing only two weeks ago.

No teeth yet.  I keep expecting them though.  I can feel something on his lower gum, but it isn’t red or puffy.  We’ve still got a few weeks, I should think.

In closing, here is a picture of Noah from a hike we took on Saturday.  Ain’t he cute?

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So Noah’s got this world map on the floor that he plays around on. It’s been just as educational for us, as we’re updating our 1980s-carmen-sandiego-level geography[1] and learning some new flags. In order to pass on this education to our readers, I’ll go over a few of the most notable flags and the things that make them stand out:

• Most Upbeat
  Nothing says “Unbridled optimism is the order of the day” like Seychelles’. Macedonia gets honorable mention though.
  
• Least Interesting to Color-blind People
  This one is a dead tie between Libya and Bangladesh.
  
• Most Free-spirited
  Look at those Nepalese… their flag isn’t even rectangular! Way to think outside the box, guys.
  
• Most Blatant Rip-off of Indonesia
  This one without a doubt goes to Monaco. You deserve it, Monaco! (Honorable mentions: Singapore, Poland, and Malta.)
  
• Furthest Downhill
  Russia gets this one. The USSR’s flag was pretty bold and memorable, but now Russia’s is just stripes.
  
• Most Stars
  The United States has fifty; it would be pretty impractical for another country to try to top this.
  
• Most Difficult to Draw
  Wait, did you say fifty stars?
  

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[1] - “Tajikistan? What’s that?”

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Noah is now five months old, and he’s becoming very mobile.  I can see that child-proofing is going to be a priority before this month is out.  Since Saturday, he’s learned to roll over from his back to his tummy and to do the commando crawl (using his arms only to propel him forward).  He can also somewhat slither by doing half rolling over on each side to move forward.  It’s crazy how quickly he starts to move!  We are now having wrestling matches on the changing table - not because he doesn’t want to be changed, but because he is so interested in everything around him that he’s realized that he can possibly get to them.  The target for him on the changing table is the quilt that his Great-Grandma made him that his hanging just within his reach (although it didn’t use to be).  He loves it.  Good thing I’ve had a lot of practice with diaper changing because putting diapers on a sideways baby is quite challenging!

Noah also got to experience his first food a couple of weeks ago.  We started him out on sweet potatoes, and he did surprisingly well keeping the food in his mouth.  Of course, he didn’t eat very much and he still needed to nurse a ton afterward, but he did it!  Since then, we’ve taken a break from giving him food since he’s not extremely interested in it, and really, food is optional for babies at this age.  However, we got some cute pictures of our first attempt thanks to Loren’s awesome photography skills.

Sleep continues to be an issue, unfortunately.  This is probably because he’s going through (another!) growth spurt, and he’s excited about his new skills as a moving baby.  We are starting to review a bunch a baby-sleep books that we’ve checked out of the library, and hopefully, we can find some gems that will help us all to get some better sleep.

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