This picture is a little blurry, but you can see Falco’s two little
bottom teeth coming through. So cute!

This evening I looked in Falco’s mouth to try to gaze upon his emerging tooth, and to my surprise I saw a second tooth right next to it! So, he now has both bottom incisors coming in. I’m enjoying his toothless smile now because I don’t know how long it takes the teeth to make themselves more visible from this point. Soon he will have a smile that looks more like a toddler than a baby. I will post a photo of said teeth as soon as they can be seen from a distance.

Falco is getting the hang of eating solids now. There are still some days when he isn’t that interested, but other days he will eat as much as we serve him. His current favorite is banana baby food mixed with a little baby oatmeal. He also really likes applesauce and sweet potatoes, and he tolerates carrots. Peas are next on the list, followed by pears. We give him a new food every three days, but we’re already running out of choices in the available stage-one, organic baby foods. Either he will just stick with these until we’re ready to move on to stage two, or I’ll make him some other things myself. I think it will only be a couple of months before he can just eat tiny pieces of whatever we are eating, which will be a lot of fun and more convenient.

A week from today Falco starts swim lessons. We will be in the class with my friend from childbirth class whose baby is nine days older than Falco. I am really looking forward to it and think he will have a lot of fun. The class is six weeks long, though we will unfortunately have to miss the final class because we are going out of town. I guess we’ll have to see if maybe he could go to another class session for his graduation.

Tuesday Falco had his recheck with the cardiologist to make sure his murmur had gone away. The initial murmur due to narrowing of the pulmonary arteries had gone away, but the doctor heard a new innocent murmur. He said this type of murmur is very common and generally can’t be heard after ten years of age and that it didn’t need any type of followup. Anyway, while we were there I felt Falco’s gums, as I do every few days, to check for any signs of teething. To my surprise, I felt something sharp on his bottom gum! He cut his first tooth! It has just barely made its way through the gum, so it feels like a sharp edge and looks like a silvery line. I was so proud, excited, and sad that he is getting so big. I was also very happy because he hadn’t been fussy at all for the days leading up to the tooth, so I’m hopeful that he won’t have a hard time with teething in general.

It is hard to believe that our child is already six months old, but
yesterday he had his six-month well-baby visit to prove it. In the
photo above, he is proudly showing off his bandage from his
vaccines. He weighed 17 pounds, 11 ounces, and his height was off
the charts at 30 inches. I think that measurement was a little off–
I get 29 inches when I measure him at home–but either way he is very
tall for his age. He only had to get two shots yesterday, and he
just did what the nurse called a “mini cry” and only took a few
seconds to recover completely. I was very proud of his bravery. He
has to go back in a month to get the vaccine that they were out of
and also to have his head rechecked. He had a major flat head on one
side from always lying the same way in his crib when he was very
young. It is getting a lot better, but the doctor wants to look at
it again in a month to make sure he doesn’t need to sleep in a helmet
to correct it. I cannot see him tolerating that even if she
recommended it!

Last time I wrote (sorry for the gap in posts by the way), we had
just started Falco on solids. We tried rice cereal for a few days
and then switched to oat cereal. He ate a few bites now and then,
but most of it just ended up on his bib or the surrounding area. We
tried carrot baby food one day, and it made him gag. Today we tried
applesauce, and it was a big success! He wasn’t sure what to think
about it when we first offered it at breakfast, but I tried again at
lunch and he ate half a jar. It was the first time I have seen him
actually eat so far. It all actually stayed in his mouth and wasn’t
a huge mess. I hope he starts enjoying other foods as well. We’ll
keep introducing new things every few days.

Check out the link to the right for all of Falco’s photos from May.