Dear Felix,

HOLY CRAP, you’re 6 months old.  And… Wow, really, it’s only been 6 months?

Today, you had your 6 month check up, one day after the fact, and you’re still growing like a week and a picture of good health.  So when you’re older, and you hear people say  that goat milk isn’t good enough for babies, you can tell them that YOU were raised on it – raw, no less – and just look at you.

(Because I’m sure this is the type of conversation you’ll have as an adult, right?)

You are 17 pounds – which is now right smack in the middle of average, which is more than fine.  And you’re over 28 inches tall which is way above average.  How’d you get to be so tall?

So far, you like every fruit that’s passed your lips.  But you have not like broccoli nor lunged for avocado like you do bananas.  I’m kind of surprised at this.  I had it in my head that you’d be all about the vegetables.  You do, however, have a very “if you want me to eat it, I will” attitude about it – but you make sure I know that you’re doing me a favor.  Yup.  You’re my kid.  Oh, are those faces supposed to make me decide to stop giving you broccoli?  Not going to work.  But hold on to that, you can guilt me for it later.  When you’re 5, you can complain about how you let me feed you broccoli even though you didn’t want it, so I should let you x, y, z.

Today, we’ll try cauliflower, because it can’t be all about fruits, Nugget.  I can’t possibly see how you could have a problem with cauliflower – it tastes like potato and how could you not like potato?

Yesterday, I saw a video on that stupid “Momversation” thing about “Do you have to play with your kids?”  I feel sorry for other mothers who say “Do I have to play with my kids?”  We like to play with you.  We can’t wait to play with you more.  When you’re bigger, we’ll do things like go to the zoo, the waterfront, etc AT LEAST every other day.

Anyway.  The people in the “don’t play with your kids” camp claimed that playing with your kids too much would make them “too dependent” on you and not imaginative enough.  Not self-sufficient enough.  I think this is bullshit.  There’s so many other factors and quite frankly, that attitude doesn’t give enough credit to each child’s individual personality.  But I guess I say that because you already show quite a lot of independence and seem pretty good at amusing yourself already.  If you want us to play with you, and to show us things & talk to us about stuff & share whatever it is that seems to be going on inside your head all the time, we’ll be more than happy to oblige.

(I do think, though, that people who claim to not want to play with their kids because they want them to be self-sufficient, etc are making that up as a cover for the fact that they just don’t want to spend a lot of time with and energy on their kids.  Period.)

But there I go on my high horse again, and I fear you’re going to be that kid that annoys everyone by telling them, “Well, MY mom said…”  You’ll probably often end that sentence with something about how I said that if their moms really cared about them, they’d do x, y, z.  Or how one of their teachers is an idiot.

Ahem.  Yes, I’ll be THAT mom.

Your dad?  Well.  He seems to be the reasonable one, but he named your giraffe “Jihad.”  I’ll get called into school about things like that, too.

You & me are going to have to have a talk about this sleeping thing soon – we’d like a little after 7am consistency, please?  But other than that, you’re incredibly easy.  It feels like it was really hard the first few months but I don’t know if YOU were all that hard.  We were just terrified of you.  On your very second day here, we had to drive you to the pediatrician – ON THE FREAKIN’ LA FREEWAY.  It was awful.  I’m surprised I didn’t have a heart attack right then and there.  LA sucked.  LA still sucks and I hope you don’t ever have urges to go spend a few years in the city where you were born.  All I wanted was to get you out of there.

I was afraid to drive with you, afraid to let you cry, afraid of going out in public with you because I didn’t want to bother everyone or be completely frazzled out in public.  DUDE.  That was the stupidest fear because you’re really quite good when we’re out.  Dazzlingly so.  Especially when you & I flew to Pennsylvania alone – oh, I saw the looks on people’s faces when they saw me sit down in the boarding area with you, and you were cranky because I’d woken you up at 3 am.  People went out of their way to talk to me & compliment you at the end of the flight.  You were born to travel & be on the move.

We drove aimlessly for 3 hours one weekend – well, 3 hours away and 3 hours back.  You just sat in the car seat & stared out the window or slept.  You got a little cranky, momentarily, which was understandable because you were all wet & hungry.  But once that got taken care of, you were fine.

Anyway.  That drive on the LA freeway.  The midwife & one of her assistants made a huge fuss about how small you were and they got me all worked up and worried about it.  I’m kind of annoyed at that.  I’m kind of annoyed at some people’s handlings of us back then.  Had you weighed one more pound, no one would have worried much, and I can’t see that one pound makes much of a difference.  Plus, you were small but there was nothing weak & or unhealthy about you.  I’d say you were better off than most babies who weighed more at the get go.  There also seems to be a lot of “small babies” on both our sides of the family, so perhaps it just runs in the family and they should have stopped getting on my case about “how I ate while pregnant” after the fact.  (I did not eat a lot, because I, strangely, had no appetite.  But I tried to make it count, what I ate, plus I drank lots of raw milk & used lots of butter… plenty of fatty things.  Including me! hahahaha  I gained a lot, but little of it seemed to go to you.  So.  In hindsight, I’d have snapped at them to get off my case.)  Which is also why I feel a little smug, now, because you are above average in everything.  Including personality.

You don’t feel so fragile anymore – though, you never were, really.  WE were the ones that were fragile.

You have a slightly nerve-wracking habit of liking to pull a blanket over your face to fall asleep.  Sometimes it’s the ONLY way you’ll fall asleep.  It’s fine during the afternoon when I let you fall asleep, then immediately move the blanket off your face.  But often at night, I feel a need to keep checking or have to be yanking it off your face throughout the morning.  This is a habit we need to start breaking.  Though you have a thing about rubbing your face on anything soft.

We’re taking hours of video of you just making faces & blowing spit bubbles, etc.  You have a vast repertoire of noises.  You do have one noise that almost sounds like you’re saying, “Momomomomomomom,” but we’ll see.

YESTERDAY! Your actual 6 month birthday!  I put you in the stroller “like a big boy” for the first time.  I think you were a little dazzled by the new view.

You’re starting to sit up now, and you try REALLY hard to get yourself up to a sitting position while laying down, but you’re not quite there yet.  You’re grabby grabby grabby and I think if I need to make this many adjustments just because of your grabby little hands, dear god… the crawling…

We had our first encounter with a large group of people and I feel like I let you down there.  You were tired & cranky and I absolutely do not support the passing around of babies and the fact that I just stood there and let it happen is… strange.  Very unlike me.  But you can be sure I’ll back you up, at all times, in the future.  If you ever say no to someone and they don’t respect that, you tell them, “Don’t MAKE me call my mom over here.”  I’ll open a can of verbal whoop ass on anyone who doesn’t treat you like the individual that you are.

I think some people are kind of surprised that I’m good at this parenting thing.   My favorite compliment & thing to hear is when people say things about what a strong bond I seem to have with you.  People actually say that to me all the time, and it makes my day.  We like to speculate and make jokes about “he gets this from me, he gets that from you,”  but at the end of the day,  it’s all you.

And if you never learn to like broccoli, I promise not to make you eat it too often.