Jeezy peeps! Six months old already. I’m sure with Toby it took a lot longer to get to this point but it seems like with Gabe that I blinked and suddenly my tiny newborn baby is sitting in a high chair sucking on a bagel!

This last month has been a bit of a tough one for Gabe; he’s really been suffering with teething (we do now have a tiny corner of tooth poking through so hopefully the rest will follow soon) and he’s had a horrible cold for the last few days including a nasty croupy cough at the weekend. He does seem to be on the mend now at least so fingers crossed he recovers fully soon.

With teething and his cold he has been off his milk a bit too which has probably made him even more grumpy. I had him weighed last week though and he’s still just under the 50th centile for weight at 16lb 15oz. He’s still very long too and has almost grown out of his 6-9 month sleepsuits already!

As well as the hint of a first tooth there have been a couple of other firsts this month too. Gabe has started sitting up by himself, although he’s still pretty wobbly. He’s managing to stay upright for longer and longer every day though and I’m sure he’ll be sitting properly by himself soon enough.

I think when he can sit up a bit better Toby will enjoy interacting with him more too. Gabe can roll both ways as well now but he doesn’t really seem that bothered about doing it very much at the moment!

The other first this month has just been happening in the last few days and that is Gabe’s first food. I remember being very eager to start weaning with Toby but this time I not that excited about the prospect if I’m honest! Gabe hasn’t really shown that much interest in food but we decided to just put him in the high chair, put a few things in front of him and see what happened. Actually, I gave him a bit of bread stick to try last week – he sucked on it and did swallow a bit but threw it back up a few minutes later so I wasn’t entirely sure how things were going to go.

Yesterday Toby was having a cinnamon raisin bagel for lunch so I gave Gabe a bit to try. Probably not top of the list of first weaning foods but it’s much easier to just give Gabe whatever Toby is having! I also gave him a little bit of melon too. He certainly got the idea of what he was supposed to do with it much quicker than Toby did. It was weeks before Toby would pick anything up and put it in his mouth by himself but within a few minutes Gabe was giving that bagel a good old suck! I’m not sure how much of it he ate (if any) but there seemed to be less by the end than what he started with. He had a good go on the melon too, and today tried some toast, a bit more melon and some cucumber.

I’m sure with Gabe we’ll end up following the same combination of baby led weaning and spoon feeding. Toby never had purée, he always just ate what we did but if it was something messy that needed a spoon then I would feed him. Perhaps Gabe will have other ideas about spoon feeding but that’s the general plan anyway.

Speaking of feeding, Gabe is still having Gaviscon in his milk and ranitidine for his reflux. I actually thought last month that he was getting a lot better but then teething and a cold seems to have brought his symptoms back with a vengeance. He isn’t sick as much now although we still have the odd day with lots of sick but he was definitely showing symptoms of more silent reflux in the last few weeks. He’s had his ranitidine dose increased now and that seems to be keeping things under control again for the moment.

As I mentioned earlier Gabe has had a cold for the last week or so too. I actually ended up taking him to the out of hours GP at the weekend because he was so congested and seemed to be struggling for breath. He had what sounded like croup but the doctor gave him a good check over and decided he didn’t need any treatment, and thankfully we only had one really sleepless night and he’s been getting slowly better since.

And talking of sleepless nights – on the whole Gabe sleeps really well at night. He usually goes to bed about 6:30 pm and sleeps until some time between 4 and 5 am. Sometimes he wakes a bit earlier but I can usually get him back to sleep again by putting his dummy back in and giving him a rub on the back – this is one reason I’m glad he still sleeps in his co-sleeper crib next to me in our room! I do wish he could just manage another hour in bed – getting up at 6 doesn’t seem anywhere near as bad as getting up at 5! It wouldn’t be too bad if he went back to sleep again. Sometimes he does and I manage to get back to bed for a bit but fairly regularly Gabe is just falling back to sleep when Toby is getting up. Naps are still a bit hit and miss – the really bad teething week did mess up his naps a lot but thankfully we seem to be back to a decent morning nap of an hour and a half to two hours which he has in bed unless we’re out in which case he’ll sleep in the car or the buggy. Afternoon naps are a bit more haphazard and tend to happen in the car more often than not. I’m hoping we might crack an afternoon nap at home at some point – Toby is at nursery four afternoons a week so if Gabe would have a decent nap at home I might actually manage to get some things done around the house!

Anyway I think that’s probably about it for this month – I can’t wait to see what the next month brings..