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Six months is a huge milestone. Its one of the first milestones that we’ve reached where we can clearly say, “We’ve made it!” I’m sure there will be many similar milestones as he continues to turn into a real boy.

There are of course lots of external, obvious events that happen around this stage: Holden outgrew his car seat, we can now put him in a jogging stroller without fear of harming him, and we have found regular child care with someone who we can really count on.

But six months is big for Holden himself. A few weeks ago, he learned to sit up by himself, unsupported. I think really this is driven by his own growing curiosity about the rest of the world. There’s only so much you can see from a prone position, and I think Holden just wanted a higher view of the landscape around him. He’s started recognizing things and people at a greater distance and is reaching for things across the room. He hasn’t quite realized that merely reaching for something 10 feet away won’t bring it any closer. It’s that glimmer in his eye that says, as he spots a brightly colored vase on the table, “I want that. I want to put that in my mouth.”

He’s also learning to find humor in the world. This humor is mostly in the form of adults making the same funny noise over, and over, and over again. Fits and giggles erupt as I say “Bee…. boop!” twenty or thirty times.

And water is one of his most compelling fascinations. This is where I have started to learn a little about the difference between nature and nurture. Holden is absolutely fascinated with glasses of water. Weeks before we thought to let him try to sip from a glass, he would stare and bat at glasses of water as we drank them. We never tried to show him water, or feed him water from a bottle. But some primal part of him knows about water, and that water is good.. even though he really had no idea what it was. This became all the more apparent when we finally did let him try to drink water from one of our glasses. The look of shock and confusion as the water entered his mouth was priceless. He looked at us as if to say “What is this crap? I wanted something to drink, not this tasteless clear stuff! This can’t be what water is! Why doesn’t it taste like milk?!”

So that brings us to the last big milestone of 6 months: “solid” food. Each night for the past few weeks, Heather purees, and I serve Holden some new bland pasty food, watered down. And each night Holden offers another look of confusion as if to say “Wait, this isn’t what you gave me yesterday!” (when often, it is in fact what we gave him two days earlier) So far he has tried rice cereal, bananas, pears, delicata squash, sweet potato, oatmeal, and avocado. Apple sauce is on deck, and yogurt is in the hole.

And so, without further ado, we bring you new pictures of most of the above events! Check them out in the picture gallery.