The Collins Family: 7 months old!

Wow, just realized today that Kieran is 7 months old! That's so crazy! I just can't believe how fast time is flying by. Well, I can...but you know. It's still so shocking. He had a 6 month checkup with his pediatrician (we're a little behind) on Friday and he weighs 18lb 9 0z and is 28 inches long. According to the World Health Organizations growth charts (I like to use those, as they're for breastfed babies only) he is in the 85th percentile for his BIRTHDAY. Not even his adjusted age! For his adjusted age he's 97th percentile, ha! Sounds about right. Big sister was 18lbs at 4 months, and Kieran is 4.5 months adjusted, and he's really been matching her growth pattern. She topped out at 22lbs at 6 months so we'll see how much more he gains before he plateaus. His pediatrician and I both agreed that while Kieran is much more developmentally advanced than a 4.5 month old (his corrected age) he's not quite acting like a 7 month old, either. He's somewhere in between, more like 5-6 months old, and that's just fine! He isn't expected to be caught up until age 1-2 so he's doing amazing. We'll start feeding him solids next month when he's 6 months adjusted.

What else? He's SO close to sitting up on his own! He really likes to stand up more, though. I'll try to get him to sit up on his butt sometimes and he'll keep straight legs and just want to stand. He's pretty much outgrown his swing so we're working on obtaining a jumperoo of some sort so he can have some solo jumping time. He's pretty big in his bouncer seat as well, so when he's not in mama's arms or working on sitting he's hanging on the floor on a blanket with his sister or something. He's doing a lot of tummy time, and while he CAN roll both ways now, he doesn't do it much. If he's naked he's more apt to roll back to tummy, but I hesitate to keep him naked for TOO long - we have to pile a couple towels underneath him when he's airing out, as you can imagine!

We're just having a lot of fun right now. The kids are both really fun ages and we're getting out and doing a lot of great fall activities on top of going on walks and out to our local park. We visited an apple orchard and pumpkin patch recently with my grandma, and tomorrow we're going to another apple orchard. On Saturday we went to the last day of the farmer's market at Mill City in Minneapolis, which was fun, and we've been doing fall baking, too - we made crockpot applesauce & then oatmeal applesauce bread in the bread machine with the applesauce Maia & I made! So fun! We're just really living it up right now and having a blast doing it.

Maia at Aamodt's apple orchard

At the pumpkin patch (inside a barn, actually)

Josh & Kieran at the park

Kieran on my back in the Beco Baby carrier (love my carrier!!!)

And the kids - did I mention I'm having a blast with them, too!? They are both at such a fun age, as I said, and I'm loving it! Maia is the sweetest big sister and loving on her brother constantly. The other night he fell asleep nursing while I read bedtime stories to Maia, and she insisted I leave him there - she said "Go! I want to snuggle with him!" So I sat outside her door for a minute and let her snuggle, then grabbed a picture. What sweeties!