big boooie

Well now, this weekend is a big one. Six months. 26 weeks. 182 days. Baby Ben is growing and growing and growing and I’m finding each day, week and month more enjoyable and fulfilling than the last. It’s just so hard to believe. If I remember right, it was just last week when Anna got off the phone with her doctor and said “I think this is it” before we drove to the hospital, our indeterminate Bean making his/her way down into position. Then there was 7 lbs 11 oz of crying, nursing, family visits and wakefulness, 10 lbs of smiling, wakefulness, baseball games and diapers, 13 pounds of wakefulness, standing, gurgling, and rolling, 17 pounds of sleeping, eating, baby-talking and laughing, and now, a whole week later, 20 pounds of The Ben personified: a hysterical, messy and happy little-giant baby sitting next to me on the couch, cutting a tooth and sticking his tongue out like his lip is going to get up and run away if he doesn’t pay it enough attention. Amazing how time just slides on by, huh? It’s this whole blinking thing that’s the problem – if I could only stop from blinking my eyes, maybe Ben wouldn’t grow so fast. . .

Wow. Six months. That’s almost two percent of my life that I’ve now spent with him! That number is statistically significant!

Since our last conversation, one-sided as usual, that Ben has done quite the job of sitting up on his own (mostly) and has added somewhere around 6 or 7 new fruits and vegetables to his well-balanced diet. Laughing hysterically is now a standard feature (my favorite part of the day) and at times occurs more frequently than breathing. He has developed an affinity for our cat Callie’s tail, and thank the Lord the two of them get along to this point. I swear, if there ever was a problem with Ben and Callie, I just might have to get rid of the baby (you think I’m kidding).