New skills...

Not surprisingly, Nick gets stronger and bigger every day and week.  It's amazing to see how far he has come in just 6 months!  In the picture above he's sitting with help of the boppy pillow... although he can't do it for very long before he flops forward or backwards.  Never the less he's learning new things each day.
Nick is finally starting to sort of enjoy being on his belly... although it's never long before he starts to fuss.  
This weekend Nick figured out how to roll from his back to belly... he did this in his crib while I was trying to put him down for a nap.  I walked back into the nursery and found him with one leg sticking out of the crib and on his stomach.  Crib bumpers were put up shortly after!  The rest of the weekend he continued to practice his rolling skills, but he hasn't quite put together the fact that once he rolls from his back to his belly that he knows how to roll to his back again.  I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it all comes together and he's rolling across the room.
Nick is practicing sitting here... with the help of his hands.  The baby books refer to this as a tripod position.  It's never long before the little guy falls over, but I'm sure it won't be long before he's sitting for real.
And last but not least!  With some help and support Nick can stand for a really long time!  He puts all of his weight on his legs and is starting to pull up on things.  We think that he may skip crawling, especially since he generally wants nothing to do with being on his belly.  Only time will tell...

Sweet potatos

This week we expanded Nick's culinary experiences to include sweet potatos.  

He does much better with sweet potatos than cereal, much more appetizing.  Doesn't he look like such a little boy in the picture above?

Sweet potatos are yummy!

Clearly he totally prefers sweet potatos as you can see by his big grinning smile and lips covered in them.  While eating he decided to also put his fingers in his mouth and then he proceeded to touch everything... yeah solid foods are going to be very messy.  Good thing we have 2 dogs to clean up afterwards!

We have a roller!!

This week at daycare, Miss Linda (Nick's teacher) casually mentioned to me that Nick could roll.  I, needless to say, was shocked since he had never done this before for us.  So all weekend I have been determined to actually see him roll.  Friday we did tummy time after daycare, and that ended in a crying fit.  Saturday we tried again several times throughout the day... nope, no success.  Finally tonight right before bed we decided to give it one last try.  Third time's a charm and you can see for yourself in the video above.  Nick can roll from his stomach to his back!!!!  He can't quite roll from his back to his stomach yet, but I'm sure that's not long off.  What a great mother's day present!

Smiles

While it is still a challenge to get Nick to actually smile for the camera, he's getting a lot better.  Maybe it's the fact that we constantly have a camera in his face or maybe he's just happier now as he gets older... who knows.  
He was super happy last weekend just hanging out in his bouncer.
We went to try a new pizza place in town - Mellow Mushroom - and for those who are local, we definitely recommend it!  They have a great patio and had a guy playing live music.  Nick got into it and was dancing on my lap and smiling the whole time!
Terrible picture of me, but little Nick is just so cute when he decides to smile that I just had to post it.  It was super windy that day and Nick discovered wind for the first time and was loving it.  While he was happy, I was scared that the wind was going to blow more hair off of his balding head...

Earlier in the day, we were all hanging out in the office/guest bedroom while Eric was working on making a video for work.  Nick was enjoying "tummy time" on the boppy pillow.  He generally still HATES tummy time, and will only tolerate it for us if he's propped up on the boppy.  At this rate, he's never going to roll...
Mom and Dad will you get this camera thing out of my face?!
Okay so he's not smiling in this picture, but look how bald he's getting  :-(.  I know for a baby he still has a fair amount of hair, but he was born with a full head of hair.  I'm seriously going to superglue what's left of it to his head one of these days.
Big boy stroller!!  We finally made the transition to the jogging stroller and Nick was all about his new ride.  We haven't gone for a run quite yet - his head still bobs a little when I jog - but we're both excited for our first jog!

Solid Food!

Last week we took the plunge and started solid food with Nick!  It was virtually impossible to fill him up with just milk alone so we figured it was a good time to start him on "real" food.  We started him on rice cereal, which is really more like thick milk than what adults think of cereal.
He wasn't really sure about the whole spoon thing (and still isn't)... I think half of the cereal ended up on him instead of in his tummy.

He really wasn't such a fan of the cereal.  He always makes funny faces when we give it to him.  Perhaps he'll like oatmeal better... that's the next food he'll get to try (probably next weekend).  Or maybe he's holding out for vegetables....
So overall, the cereal seemed to help fill him up and made quite a mess of him in the process!  At least he likes sitting in his high chair!