Yes, baby has crossed the 6 month old mark! He is now 0.5 years old! Or if you prefer fractals, ½ year old! It’s been a blast to see baby grow before our very eyes. His facial features looked very much different from a few months ago. My wife asked me to take many photos because baby features will change over the months rather quickly. He is now so adorable and my cousin sister and friends (mostly girls only, guys just don’t seem to have the paternal instinct) just want to carry him because he is so cute!
Baby at six months old has some rather interesting development. According to my baby centre, 6 month old baby will have better hand-eye coordination and baby will become an expert at handling objects. I notice baby will pre-occupy himself by picking baby stuffs and toys laid around in the baby cot. When choosing baby toys, you need to bear in mind baby hands are small, the baby toys is easily pickup by baby. There are items that are interesting but the size is bigger making it difficult for baby to wrap his fingers around the object. And of course make sure the baby toy is safe and no parts come off because baby will surely put it in his mouth and bite it!
I think baby is very good at making choices so bring baby along when choosing baby toys. I place the baby toy in front of him, and if he goes for it and studies it in his hands, it is a good chance he likes that baby toy! There are times when my wife just simply bought a toy without running through with baby; he just didn’t seem to have as much interest with it as with the items that we placed in front of him for approval prior to purchasing it.
Baby is also getting stronger now though still not quite able to sit up straight by himself just yet though there is some hint he just might be able to sit up on his own. My wife bought a baby chair that would help to train baby to sit up straight. Strange little contraption, nope not the walker, it is a chair with a removable table. Baby will fit snugly into that little chair and he seems to enjoy sitting in it.
With his hands getting stronger, he likes to bang his hands on surface area making banging sound. I think it is great that he can bang about now and it is no problem at this moment for baby to make some noise. I think now it is a good time to introduce baby to the piano, so sometimes I will sit him over at the piano and let him bang out some tuneless melody on the black and white keys! Of course to introduce baby what piano playing is all about, I would settle him down on a stroller next to me by the piano and play some piano pieces. Boy it has been ages since I practiced my piano so now is a good time to start playing the piano with baby next to me. I noticed he likes fast music (slow ones just made him bored and fidgety), but with my rusty playing I guess I’m going to need to brush up on my piano playing.
My wife has already introduced some solid food for baby and he is now taking some baby cereal to compliment with his daily milk intake. According to baby centre, it is good start baby on some solid food as baby will need additional mineral especially iron as their iron stores will begin to run low. However taking baby cereal could be rather dehydrating for baby, so apart from milk feeding, baby also needs to drink water too.
My wife also tried to introduce fruit juice, and paediatrician recommended giving apple juice. We tried using red apples which are sweeter as green apples are just too sour. Unfortunately baby didn’t like the slightly sour taste despite it being red apples and baby would just shut his mouth real tight! Not even the spoon could get in his mouth! I guess apple fruit juice will just have to wait.
Baby is trying to be more mobile now; he can roll about but still got some ways to go before he could crawl. In order to encourage him to crawl or roll about more, I place the baby toys just slight out of reach from him. That should get him going! If I place him up, he would straighten his legs as though he could stand and sometimes he will brace himself with his hands in front of him but would only last for a while. Sometimes we end up playing some bouncing games he would just laugh out loud! Bouncing around is really fun for baby though my wife frown on this type of fun. Recently he likes to cruise around like superboy with his hands in front, face down while I carry him around the house!
This is the time to introduce the baby walker and the current gear that he has is “gostan” (reverse gear)! Moving backwards in the baby walker is the best he can do at this moment. So eventually he would know how to change direction and of course without the walker, move around unassisted, and with that we would really need to keep an eye on him!
Way to go! Baby 6 months old, another six months to his first birthday!