6 months old!

Brenden & Wendy Fortney. We get mail for a Wendy Fortney, and we joke that Brenden got married without telling us. The most obvious suspect is his glow-worm, who he loves to stare at reverently and kiss. (Last night he spent a few minutes licking its face.)

Opening Christmas presents from Grandma and Grandpa Cordill

"Thank you, thank you very much"

It's hard to believe Brenden is 6 months old already! Adam and I were just looking at his newborn pictures and reminiscing. The time has gone so fast. Life has become a little less weird and a lot more fun since Brenden was first born. I would give my pinky toe, maybe both pinky toes, for a whole night's sleep, but I can't wait to get home in the evenings to play with Brenden.

Brenden had his 6 month check-up today, and he was very brave for his shot. Here are his stats:

Height: 29.5" (97% percentile)

Weight: 19 lbs, 10 oz (85% percentile)

Brenden's iron level is very good, which was a relief. We were a little freaked when the doctor heard a heart murmur, but she said it's very faint and it's nothing to worry about. She said they'll continue to monitor it at regular check-ups and perform an echo if it hasn't cleared up by age 10.

After lots of deliberating, we decided to give Brenden the seasonal flu shot since we're flying next week. We're splitting up his other vaccines. We think it's important to vaccinate him, but we figured we might as well split up the vaccines between visits in case that makes any difference in preventing some of the scary side-effects people talk about. The vaccine scares may be bogus, but just in case...

The doctor also discovered that Brenden has his first tooth, and his second one is already on its way out! Teething is a likely culprit in his sleeping problems, and the doctor thinks he might also be getting up a lot at night to nurse. He's been gradually reducing the amount he takes by bottle during the day, so he might have figured out that he can wake me up at night and get to nurse more.

Brenden has been doing lots of new things lately:

• reaching for us (love it!)


• standing up while holding our hands


• running his hands through Mom's hair. He just runs his hand back and forth really gently; it's the sweetest thing.


• eating rice cereal. He didn't like it the first couple of times, but now he'd eat the whole box if we let him.


• rolling over onto his tummy. He doesn't know how to roll back to his back yet, which makes him mad.


• sucking on washcloths during bathtime. If I don't give him his own washcloth to suck on, he'll rip the washcloth I'm using to bathe him right out of my hands.


• holding on to toys when we try to take them away. He has such a strong grip, I sometimes have to use both hands to get things out of his hands.

Brenden Kitty

Usually we fret like nervous squirrels when Brenden cries. But tonight I couldn't help cracking up when Brenden started mewing like our kitty Gabby used to do when we gave her a bath. (For anyone who doesn't know, Gabby was our beloved kitty who passed away a couple of years ago.) What's really weird is I had just showed him Gabby's ornament on our Christmas tree and told him about her (for the 50th time, I'm sure!). The ornament is one I made for Gabby on her last Christmas, because I knew it would probably be her last, and now we put it at the top of our tree because she's our little angel. I'm a total cheeseball but I still miss her. I'll never forget how heartbroken we were the night we had her put to sleep. See, I'm tearing up just writing about it.

Brenden is pretty oblivious to the holidays. We were so excited to take him to the toystore to pick out his presents, but he was more interested in taste-testing the boxes. We had our first family portrait done over the weekend. The pictures turned out nice but it was NOT FUN for any of us. Brenden was scared and we were very annoyed that they kept trying to sell us more than we wanted.

I'm concerned that Brenden is scared and shy of other people. If that's his natural personality, that's fine, but I'm worried that it's because he doesn't get to interact with other people much. We take him out all the time and to see friends on occassion, but there's no one else who's a regular part of his life. Brenden has never been without one of us, and now that we're ready to get away just the two of us, there's no one he's comfortable enough with to leave him.

It would be so nice to just go have dinner together and have a little break. It's been tough lately because Brenden hasn't slept well the past 6 weeks. I'm trying to cut things out of my diet in case he has an allergy (sometimes his little tummy rumbles and he seems uncomfortable), but that only helped for a few days and now he's back to waking up every 2 hours. He slept better when he was 2 months old. I think it's partially our fault. We still rock him to sleep and have to lay him down really gently without waking him. All my friends say they just lay their babies down and they fall asleep on their own. We don't think the cry it out method is right for Brenden, but we may not have any other choice if this goes on much longer.