Wow, has it been six months already? As Jessica commented the other day, “our little boy is growing up fast.” Here is what Levi is up to these days:

• Sitting up on his own. As you can see above, Levi is now able to sit up for an extended period of time without any support from us or the bumbo. He’s a little wobbly at times, but is getting pretty good at figuring out how to balance himself and keep from falling over.

• Gaining weight and getting taller. At Levi’s 6-month checkup, Levi was in the 70th % for weight, 50th % for height, and 75th % for head size. Considering he was below the 10th % for height and 15th % for weight when he was born, that’s not too shabby! And as for his head, well, he’s always had a pretty big noggin. Our pediatrician continues to monitor his head size closely and is watching for any signs of macrocephaly, which is a condition where the head grows abnormally large. But so far, everything looks great.

• Growing more hair. Levi is definitely going to have a full head of hair real soon. It’s growing in pretty thick, especially in the middle, and it looks like we’ll have to cut it in the near future. I think he got this from me. My dad always had a full head of hair and ladies who cut my hair always comment on my think hair and how I’ll never go bald. It looks like Levi’s hair will be similar. As for the light brown/blondish color – we’re still puzzled where that came from.

• Eating solid foods. Well, if you call baby food a solid food, that is. Levi has been eating cereal for several weeks now. He’s still not a huge fan, but Susy (our nanny) can usually get him to eat a bowl every morning. Fruits and veggies, however, are a different story. We bought just about every variety of Gerber baby food the other day. We picked out what we thought to be the blandest one and let Levi try it. He made the most horrible faces and basically refunded everything we were able to get in his mouth. We tried several others to see if we could find one he liked but with similar results. So at this point, he’s eating mainly cereal and occasionally we’ll try a fruit or veggie.

• Throwing stuff. We think Levi is a southpaw because he loves to throw his toys with his left hand. He loves to grab, hold, and touch things with both hands, but when it comes time to get rid of something, he always uses his left arm for the job. This is what we’ve been anticipating all along. Since his stroke affected only the left side of his brain, we’ve been expecting him to utilize his left arm more (since it is controlled by the right side of the brain.) Other than that, though, he shows no signs of having any disabilities or limitations using his right side. In fact, he primarily uses his right foot for pushing off while in his bouncer.

• Getting talkative. Levi loves to jabber and make sounds. Sometimes, we’ll talk to him or ask him a question and he’ll respond with some random sounds like he’s trying to talk back to us. Also, he’s discovered how to scream in this high-pitched voice in the last few days. At first it was really cute, but now it reminds us a lot of that line in Dumb & Dumber where Jim Carrey asks, “You wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?” It still makes us chuckle when he does it – but we also hope he grows out of it in a hurry.

• Loves his bouncer. Levi just loves spending time in his bouncer. He’ll cackle and laugh the whole time he’s in there. He’ll bounce and bounce and seem to never get bored with it. We bought an exersaucer for him the other day that has tons more toys and sound-makers than his bouncer. Levi tries and tries to make it bounce like his bouncer, but since it won’t, he gets bored with it pretty quickly.

• Sending emails. I received this email the other day. Although he hasn’t quite grasped the idea of email addresses, the internet, or even the English language, Levi definitely loves to bang on his mom’s keyboard when she is working:

From: Jessica Date: Aug 1, 2007
Subject: an email from your son

mny vk yukj b kn,
,m s ,./l.uuuuuuuuuj|K<<”