6 months

weight: 7.634kg length: 68.4 cm

social skills: this little man loves being the centre of attention. he's all smiles and laughs and when the excitement gets too much, he stuffs his whole hand in his mouth as if to stop himself from bursting (see photo above). it's getting harder and harder to select my favourite photo for the monthly portrait as the level of cuteness is going through the roof.

we now have mini conversations that go something like:

me - da da da

atti - da da da da da da da

a friend pointed out that i'm setting him up for his first word to be "dada" so now our conversations go something like this:

me - ma ma ma

atti - da da da da da da da 

filipp - amused

accomplishments: Atticus has now mastered rolling over, back to belly, belly to back both ways. his new trick is going round in circles on his belly reaching for different object within reach. a certain point of attraction is Harry's sheepskin bed and our cow hide rug. he somehow always manages to wriggle towards either of those furry objects and spends time carefully caressing the cowhide or digging his face into the sheepskin. he's also started pushing back and sliding on the wooden floors so i think mobility is not too far away! 

standing is a favourite by far. whenever i give Atti my fingers to pull him to sitting he tries to come to standing straight away and is so proud of himself when he does. he looks around the room with the biggest grin on his face to make sure everyone else can see him standing.

Atti is also getting much better at balancing himself in the seated position. he can sit on the couch for an extended period of time before tumbling over.

another great accomplishment is the appearance of our first teeth. they started cutting through at about 5 and a half months and are now clearly visible. he's able to demolish a teething rusk in no time. 

we're struggling with solids at the moment. Atti will only eat apples or something concealed by apple taste. even carrots aren't cutting it any more. his enthusiasm for food is bigger than ever. he watches us eat with such great attention and is always trying to steal food out of my hands. i'm actually really excited by all the new foods the 6 month mark opens for us. this month, we'll be experimenting with fish, chicken and meat.

challenges: one word...sleep. the past month and especially the last couple of weeks has been really bad. Atti has been waking up up to 6 times a night and refusing to settle no matter how many times i feed him. between the wee hours of 2am and 4am is 'party time ' in our house. it's been highly frustrating and taxing on us. 

when Atti was around the 4 month mark we had a good solid 6 weeks maybe of him waking only once at night, usually around the 4 am mark, and then going back to sleep after a feed. how times have changed! a night when he wakes up twice is a miracle these days. he's just so alert and eager to play that sleep seems not to be a priority.

interests: Atti's favourite story is a Russian tale of cleanliness called Moidodir. if he's being a bit grizzly in the car or pram, i start reciting the story to him and he immediately calms down and starts listening, he laughs out loud when we reach  his favourite verse. i'm always amazed how he's able to recognise that particular paragraph every single time.
he loves smiles, tickles, cheekiness, and tumbling around. Harry is still a point of focus and sometimes when Atticus watches Harry do something funny like scratch himself, he'll just lie there and laugh.