Wasn’t Nico just born?  Has it really been almost 7 months???  Time is just flying and June really whizzed by.  I ended up taking a bunch of photos and videos — probably because I felt so guilty about not taking many in April and May.  But I was actually busier in June than in either of those months.  Between some big deadlines at both of my jobs, I ended up working nearly 80 hours this month and Frank was really busy at work too.  At some point I turned 34, Frank celebrated his first Father’s Day, Frank had a horrible neck spasm that sent him to a chiropractor, and Nico grew up a litle more.  All of that was pretty much a blur, though.  My goal was to be a full-time mom and do some part-time work, but this month that sure didn’t pan out — I was doing both pretty much full-time.  July and August promise to be a little bit more sane and we even have some fun travel planned.  We’re all looking forward to that.

Nico made tremendous leaps and bounds all month long!  Here are some highlights:

• He started the month with 2 teeth and finished it with seven!  4 on the bottom and 3 (plus one about to come in) on the top.  Poor little guy had 4 top teeth pushing and shoving to come in all at the same time, just after 2 had come through on the bottom.  The good news is that there are only 20 total, so he’s getting a lot of the hard work out of the way early on.
• June 8th – Nico had his first babysitter this month.  I had been staying up until 2 or 3 AM writing and then getting up with him around 9 every day and trying to write if he took naps.  But I could see that there was no way I could keep up that pace and also that even with that pace I wouldn’t meet my deadlines.  So I found a babysitter to come for 4 hours a day, two days a week.  I still spent most of the month working until the wee hours, but having her here for 8 hours a week made a huge difference!  And she’s great — she is going to grad school in the fall for speech/language pathology and she knows sign language, so she’s signing with him and spends a lot of time reading to him and teaching him new things.  I haven’t worked up to leaving him alone with her yet, but it’s great to have here there while I work.  An added benefit is that I can just go downstairs if he cries or needs to eat, so I don’t need to pump or anything.  So far it’s really easy and quite a lifesaver for me.
• June 9th – Nico turned 6 months old!
• He makes a ton of sounds now, although it’s way too early for any of them to mean anything.  For a long time “guh” was his main sound.  That was replaced by “buh.”  Those are still his two favorites.  But “dadada” is now a very popular one.  And he says “kuh” “wuh” “yuh” “ha” “fuh” “tuh” “puh” “suh” and “juh.”  Now that he’s got those top teeth, he loves feeling them against his lips so he says a lot of “vuh” and “fuh.” 
• He still won’t eat any food.  At all.  If anything goes in his mouth, he gags and gags and gags until he throws up.  This proved to be a good thing a couple of times when he ended up with paper in his mouth (part of the binding of a board book, part of a paper napkin at a restaurant…).  He gagged and we swept the paper out.  But he really should be eating by now.  We’ll be talking to his pediatrician about this on Friday at his 7 month visit. 
• He crawled backward for the first 2 weeks of June, but couldn’t figure out how to go forward.  On June 14th he crawled forward for the first time.  He still doesn’t go too far, though, even though he can.  He figured out how to sit back up from crawling on June 24th, so now he likes to go a few steps and sit down, go a few steps and sit down.  Mostly, though, he just wants to stand up.  He’ll pull himself to his feet from our legs if we’re sitting on the ground or from anything that’s about 6 inches off the ground.  He climbs up the coffee table and the couch.  And he balances on his own — often just holding on with 1 hand so he can do something with the other one.  He is getting more and more stable every day and we think he’s going to forget about crawling and go straight to walking.  He always has wanted to be vertical… 
• I keep telling him about all the advantages of staying a baby for a while and telling him that the faster he grows up, the sooner he’s going to have to get a job.  But he doesn’t care.  He just pushes those teeth through and tries to stand up and forgets all about being a baby.    It makes me sad — he’s growing up too fast!
• June 14th was a big day for 2 other things too.  He seemed to understand when we said “where’s the cat?”  He’d stop what he was doing and look around until he spotted the cat.  He could care less about “where’s Daddy?” or “where’s Mommy?”  But “where’s the cat?” elicited an immediate reaction without fail, every time.  That day he also showed a real interest in reading.  I was sitting on the floor with him next to a bookshelf and we were reading his all-time favorite book, Pajama Time.  When it was done, he pulled himself over my leg, hung out on his belly on my leg, grabbed a book off the shelf with one hand, and brought the book back with him as he came back to sit on my lap.  An adorable fluke, right?  That’s what I thought until he did it again.  And then a third time.  He was deliberately selecting books and bringing them back to me to read, waiting until the end of the story, and doing it again.  Eventually he was more interested in just pulling the books off the shelf, but he started by wanting me to read to him!
• He is getting much more demonstrative with his love.   He gives real hugs and “kisses” (which are just huge slobbery messes as he puts his wide open mouth against our cheek or chin and holds it there until we are sufficiently soggy).  He’ll often hug my neck, pull back to look at me and smile, and then hug me again.  It melts my heart every time!
• He started having mini temper tantrums this month.  He suddenly gets angry if we take something away from him and cries if we don’t substitute it with something else.  He has also cried if we redirect him from something he wanted to do.  I used to have a hard time picturing him as a toddler having a tantrum (even though I knew it was coming).  Now I can totally picture it — and it scares me!
• My parents came to visit at the end of June, helping with big house projects and watching Nico so I could work.  It was extremely helpful and he had a lot of fun with his Grandma and Grandpa.
• To those of you still reading (and I have been assured that it’s more than just the grandparents who read to the end), thank you for indulging me in sharing these minute details about my little boy and enjoy the photos!