Cal is 6 Months Old!

Cal at 6 months, July 22nd, 2012

On the way to the park yesterday I waited at the traffic lights at the intersection of the Postjesweg and Hoofdweg and was reminded of all those car trips back and forth to the hospital when Cal was born 5 and a half weeks prematurely. It was one of the snowiest winters in Amsterdam and we wore ski gear in the car as the heater never kicked into action until we were parking at the hospital. Standing in a breezy summer dress, waiting for the lights to change, I remembered sitting in the car freezing and exhausted from going back and forth to to Sint Lucas when I just wanted to be curled up at home on the couch recovering from a c-section with my new little baby in my arms. So often at those traffic lights David would reassure me that it was temporary, but at the time with no definite end-date to his stay, only a promise that he could leave when he was strong enough, it felt difficult to imagine this day, six months ahead, when I would be standing in the blazing sunshine with my chubby little dude slathered in sunscreen, on our way to the park.


He is the friendliest of babies, old ladies and new babysitters comment on it as he grins goofily at them. He is still incredibly relaxed but has shifted up a gear in the past week and now demands that the entertainment staff work a little bit harder than they used to. And when things get dull he lets us know with his new found football hooligan voice. Shouting is the new thing. It's not aggressive or frustrated, just demonstrative. Not hungry, he'll tell you by shouting about it for a minute or two. He doesn't seem upset and will often break into a giggle mid-holler when he sees the reaction it gets from us.


He's bang-on average in terms of weight, height and brain-size (I'm assuming that's why they measure his head every time we go for a check-up?) confirming our very Dutch midwife's prediction they we were having, "a very average child!" Although in cheek size, which they don't measure, I'm sure he's in the 99th percentile.


Food - eats it, likes it, poops it. Sleep - pretty good still. Down at 6, up at 6 with one feed in between. For some reason (I suspect the dwindling of super-pregnancy hormones) I am absolutely shattered at the moment, way more than when he was a newborn. He's getting stronger every week and I hope he'll be sitting in the next month or so because just staring at the ceiling all day has got to be a bummer for him and it's hard work for me trying to entertain him from above constantly, or carry him around the house with me on my hip.


We crossed at the lights and wandered over to the kinder farm in the Rembrandt park. I bent down to show him a duck and it waddled right up to us in search of a snack. Cal took a swipe at it and grinned. Then we had boobies on a blanket in the shade of a tree and he even let me read a chapter of my book while he blissed out on the sunshine streaming through the canopy of trees above. Not a bad 1/2 birthday, I reckon.

Ready to bring Cal home, February, 2012