March 25th was Eamon's 6 month birthday. I can't believe it! It has gone so fast and I feel like he's been here forever. His personality is definitely starting to show now. He really is a mellow baby... unless something is hurting him. He doesn't do well with pain and discomfort - like teething. Ugh. Besides that he loves to watch his big brother and laughs every time he even touches Jack... which is rare because Gosh Forbid Eamon even grab Jack's arm! Eamon is really ticklish, like his mama, and is especially ticklish on his hands. Crazy, right?? E's new best friend is Barley and he cries when Barley goes out of his view. In the morning he wakes up so happy and is literally screaming with delight. I have to hurry up and take him into the living room before his squeals wake up Jackson.

Eamon is up on all fours and rocking back and forth. He has started to move his legs, but darn those arms just won't move. Instead he likes to rock back and forth a few times and fling his body forward to get whatever toy he wants.

Update from his 6 month appointment today: 20 lbs 4 oz - doubled his birthweight, 27.5 inches ~ 75th% in height, 90th% in weight, and 45th% in head circumference. This is all slightly down from his last checkup, but nothing to worry about. I'm sure the next growth spurt will take care of that.

Since turning 2, Jack has launched himself fully into Big Boy World. Here are some of the fun things he can do:

Eamon has started munching on some of our table food. I haven't given him any traditional "baby food" yet as I still think he's just interested in sucking and playing with the food, not actually eating it. He still coughs and chokes on anything that is not pure liquid so he's not developmentally ready yet. Plus, I'm just lazy. Feeding him pureed food means I've got to start making it, freezing it, defrosting it, feeding him, cleaning him off, cleaning the chair off... yeah, a lot of a work for this lazy mama.

I'm going to try the route of baby led weaning which you can find more information on here. It's where you skip pureed food and wait until at least 6 months to introduce solids where they are more developmentally ready to feed themselves and can handle chunkier food. I sort of did it with Jack, but he also had pureed foods. A lot of mamas I know do this. We're following the rule of "food before 1, just for fun." Yay!

Here are our first family portraits by Jessica Manzano Photography. They came out better than I could ever imagine. I met Jessica through my local "Brevard Natural Moms" group. Most of the pictures of children on her website are of other moms in the group. Thank you, Jessica, you do amazing work!

I have them listed on Shutterfly seen here if you'd like to order some.

You love me! You really love me!! You better love me because everyone reading this is either related to me or a friend! Either case leaves you at my mercy for reading my every blogging whim. To that end, my friend Tracey over at Tales of Little Bitty gave me a blogger award this past week! If you take a gander over at her mack-daddy blog you can see that she really truly earned this award. Her pictures are fantastic, the graphic design (done by Tracey, by the way) is amazing and her son, Jack, is beyond words! My blog? Not so much. But hey, my kids are cute.


Part of the award is to list 10 random things about me. I can't promise that all of them are going to be noteworthy, but here goes:

• I am a proud extended breastfeeding, co-sleeping, baby wearing, intactavist, cloth diapering, attached parent to 2 beautiful boys and wife to Matthew Raines going on 5 years.

• The beach is a 10 minute walk from my house. This is the best place I've ever lived.

• I have issues with bread.

• I'm realizing that I have a lot more of my Jewish grandmother in me than I thought. I never think anyone eats enough.

• My fitness goal for this year (and possibly next depending on how things go) is to learn how to surf.

• Once I become interested in something, it quickly turns into an obsession. My current ones? Mei Tais (no, not a drink) and grilling

• I think Christopher Columbus was a terrible human being and I taught my 1st graders why.

• I used to host a classic rock show on my high school radio station. It was called "Revival." Inmates from the county jail would collect call the request line. "Do you accept a collect call from: PLAY SOME SKYNARD!!!" is something I heard once a week for 2 years. I have a crazy amount of classic rock knowledge for someone who was born 20 years after it began.
  

• Housekeeping is the hardest part of being a stay-at-home mother for me.
  

• I'm not sure if I want to go back into teaching when I'm ready to rejoin the work force.

Eamon started sitting up on his own this past week! He still needs assistance with balance - much like his Mama - but he's doing great. It's his new favorite thing to do. I'm so happy he reached this point because my wrists were getting damaged from holding up 20lbs in an upright position all day long.

This weekend we went to Kennedy Space Center's Family Picnic at Kars Park. The weather was beyond gorgeous and they had tons of fun things for the kids to do. Plus it was being catered by a local bbq place - need I say more?