Smiley Face

Luke has been sick again with a cold for the past couple of days.  We seem to be in the midst of a germ cycle where Brooke and Scott get sick, Luke gets it a few days later, and then I follow at the rear.  I hope we break the cycle soon because this is getting very old.  Poor Luke has a fever, is stuffed up, has little interest in his bottles, and is generally feeling bad.  I know how he feels since I am not in much better shape.  Still, it is hard to see a baby feeling so pathetic and not being able to do much to help him.  Luke is amazing though.  He always manages to give you a smile even when he is feeling his worst.  I wish I had a little more of that in me.

Luke is now 6 months old, and in many ways we are beginning to feel like the toughest months are behind us.  Luke had his six month checkup and was pronounced healthy and developing as he should be.  He was 16 pounds (around 25th percentile) and 26.5 inches (just under 50th percentile).  He got his six month vaccinations and took them like a champ.  Luke has really started to change in the past few weeks, and he is getting to be more and more fun each week.  Luke can easily roll over both ways and sometimes will roll over and choose to sleep on his belly at night.  He is very good at sitting up unassisted.  I feel like he is good enough that I can walk away and leave him sitting up playing on the carpet.  Sometimes he will get off balance and fall over, but not too often.  This development has made playtime a lot more fun for all of us.  The other thing that has happened in the past month is that Luke has become very vocal.  He will loudly make all kinds of sounds, but the funniest is when he blows raspberries with his lips.  He will also mimic you if you do it to him.  Luke is not doing any crawling yet, but when he is on his belly he will kick his legs like he is trying to propel himself.  We are also still waiting on teeth even though we keep saying it could be any day now.  I guess he will be a late teether like his sister.

In other unreported news, Luke’s baptism was last weekend.  We had a nice time with both of Luke’s grandmothers and Aunt Pam in town for the event.  Luke smiled at Rev. Mary Bendall, who performed the ceremony.  He let her walk him down into the congregation with no trepidation.  Everything went well, and we all shared a special day in Luke’s life.

The past week has included several firsts for Luke.  He has started eating fruits and enjoyed both bananas and applesauce.  He was outgrowing his Snugride infant carseat, so we made the big switch.  Luke is now in Brooke’s old Britax Roundabout, and Brooke is in her new SafeGuard Go seat.  Since we don’t have the infant seat, Luke sat in a restaurant highchair for the first time while we had lunch at Ted’s Montana Grill.  We have a cover that goes in a highchair or grocery shopping cart, and he did very well in it.  Luke enjoyed looking around from this new vantage point, especially since there were cool things like buffalo heads on the wall.  Unfortunately, Luke also seems to have caught his first cold as it makes its way through the family.  Right now he just has a runny nose, and I hope he fights is off quickly without much of an event.