Who Doesn't Love Swimming?

A Tooth

Today I discovered Henry's first tooth creeping in on the bottom right. Guess I know why he's been so unhappy the past couple days.

Six Months Already!

It's amazing how much changes in just six short months. Henry is an extremely active healthy baby. It's so fun to wake up every morning and find out what he has learned and how he has changed, seemingly overnight. Now he can sit up on his own for a couple minutes, hold his own bottle, he says "da da da da da," he loves his jumper and playing with toys. Fortunately, he cries much less now when he's in his car seat and is, in general, a little bit more independent. He has really taken to eating cereal and baby food (especially when it's really thick). He smiles, giggles and screams tons. He now grabs at everything in sight and usually tries to put it straight into his mouth. When he takes a bath I have to give him his own clean wash cloth because he always tries to eat the one I'm using to clean him.

Henry still doesn't regularly sleep through the night but after a little coaxing we've gotten him to the point where we know he CAN sleep through the night and often he sleeps at least 6-7 hours before wanting to eat again. His favorite place to sleep (aside from in someone's arms) is pictured below. Even if we put him to sleep in the middle of the crib within minutes he will scoot his way to the top and smoosh his head in the corner just like the picture or he'll turn himself around so that he is parallel to the top edge of the crib still pushing his head into the corner. Maybe he likes tight spaces?

Every day is a joy!

Joe and I are good too, but no where near as fun to talk about!

Cereal... Yum!

Jump!

Finally!

On January 15th Henry got his first haircut. He had a pretty serious comb-over and/or mowhawk. So, Heidi snipped a bit off the top, he couldn't be cuter!

Unfortunately, on January 25, we noticed that Henry was wheezing. He had been struggling with a cold for several days, but the wheezing made us nervous. His doctor diagnosed him with RSV - a virus that causes the air sac's in a baby's lungs to fill with mucus. Fortunately, though, he doesn't have an ear infection which often comes right along with RSV. Henry is now taking Albuterol (an asthma medication) through an inhaler every few hours. It seems to be helping quite a bit. Henry is still the happy baby that he has always been, this setback doesn't seem to bother him a bit. I would say the most frustrating thing is that his coughing fits often make him throw up... it couldn't be pleasant for him and it's definately not pleasant to clean up. Thank goodness he's not on solids, yet! Anyway, like I said, the medicine seems to be helping. We're hoping he'll be over it in a couple days.

And, the best news of all, until yesterday, January 27, Henry had refused to roll over. It was obvious that if he had wanted to he could. Yesterday, we spent quite a while pushing him over and trying to make him reach toys that were just out of reach and HE ROLLED from his back to his stomach. And, once he got there he was unhappy about being on his stomach. He still doesn't roll front to back, but he ought to learn so he can get off his stomach at will!

Joe's doing well in school. In January they did their first clinical course, which I think he loved. It doesn't seem like they get to do too much of that until their third year, and then that's most of what they do. He's now taking biochemistry, physiology and genetics, I think. Sounds rough.

Christmas in Pictures

Henry has help from his Daddy-O on Christmas morning, opening presents is exciting...

More help opening presents, this time from Mom. It would have been more exciting if the presents were a surprise for Mom and Dad too...

And, after just two presents, Henry decides that opening them is not so fun, especially when he's hungry. So Joe opens them, and show him what he got while he eats breakfast.

On Christmas Eve the "Spilker" girls show off their amazing talent by dancing and lip-syncing to Little Saint Nick by the Beach Boys. Making fools of ourselves is a fun Christmas Eve Tradition for us girls.

The day before that at an Atkin Christmas Party we learned that Henry is afraid of his Grandpa Atkin.

Not so afraid of Santa Claus, though.