You've Come A Long Way, Baby: Nostalgia and making new memories

I recently looked back at some older videos of Levi, circa December 2012 and forward. He was so little! A lot of them made me cry because I realized how much I miss that little bean of ours. I'm upset that we didn't get a camcorder before we did since there's six months of his life that, yes, have tons of pictures, but it would've been nice to have a video.
I've decided to try and take video at least once a week from now on.
It's funny how I don't remember the difficult things about the second six months of his life, just the fun things in the videos. Of course, if I sit down and really think about it I could come up with some, but each age has its own issues, so I guess I'll leave it at that.

In May we went on vacation to VA Beach. I was worried about how he'd do sleep-wise, especially since he wasn't too keen on the pack 'n play. He was fine! We stuck pretty close to the hotel so that he could still have naps and our room was laid out so that we could move his 'bed' to another part when it was time for nap or sleep.
I really wanted to stop the mid-night feeding, but decided to wait until he was back home in his own bed and things were back to normal. Thankfully that process was pretty painless. He cried for less than ten minutes for a couple of nights and then, voila! I still wake up if I hear him or if he cries, but we just let him go and he's back to sleep in just a couple of minutes.

Last weekend we visited Tim's family in Maryland. Levi slept in the pnp in the basement and was fine the first night. He woke up crying really loudly the second night and wouldn't stop. So I went out to him (our room was in a separate room in the basement), tried to nurse him, but he wanted just to be held. I sang and tried to put him back down once he fell asleep. Well, *that* was not going to work. So I made a little bed for us on their big couch and ottoman and I held him until he fell asleep. I slept, too, not the best, but hey, beggars can't be choosers, right? Around 1:30 he started getting all wiggly so I put him back to bed. I told Tim that I wouldn't want to do it weekly, for sure, but it was really special to spend that time with him. I don't know how much longer he'll want to do that.

Levi's still enthusiastic about nursing, even though I think I've pretty much dried up. He still gets some, but I don't think he realizes that it's not as much as before and he doesn't get full. I nurse only three to four times: wake-up, 2 naps, and bedtime. I couple of times I've been away and he's gone down fine without me.

Levi started whole milk a month ago or so and at first didn't care for it. I watered it down and then slowly decreased the amount of water. He's fine with it now. His dr. said that he should get 8-24 oz. a day. I know he gets somewhere between those numbers. We still do a water sippy during the non-meal times.

Two of his favorite foods are pizza and a new dish that I just made, Unstuffed Cabbage. It's pretty much everything in stuffed cabbage, just all mixed together in a pot. A ton easier than the fancy roll-up kind. He loves his yogurt afternoon snack-plain mixed with some baby food fruit. The Yoplait kind is just too sweet. We give him baby cereal at each meal, mixed with either fruit or veggie baby food. He takes it fine and I'll probably give it to him until he refuses it or gets too big. It's nice because he gets a lot of vitamins in it as well as iron. He's a good eater at meals, but sometimes he doesn't eat a whole bunch, so that's why I want to give him the cereal. Although maybe the cereal is why he *doesn't* eat a lot of other things. Always a puzzle.

No walking yet, but Levi still gets around very well and very fast. We penned off the living room and he's content in there the majority of the time. Even more so if mommy's in there with him. And since I can't do that all day, well, there's a sad little boy here most days. But as soon as I go out in the kitchen or out of sight he can sit right down and play all by himself. Silly boy.

I'll finish up with some pictures that will hopefully show some things that I didn't mention.