:: Mr Willem at 6 months ::

Happy 6 Months Willem!

That is officially the fastest 6 months of my life gone. Half a year? At this rate, he'll be one year old next month. 

It's been an interesting month. Sleep patterns have gone a little crazy. He has a couple of good naps in the day, but he's waking a lot more often at night. Around every 3 hours. This could be largely due to the trouble we've had with his ezcema on his face. We've been battling this for about 3 months now, but in the past 2 months it's been really horrible. His poor face so red, itchy and inflammed. :-( We've had to keep socks on his hands most of the day because of his constant scratching. If we took the socks off for even 15 minutes, he'd make himself bleed. This meant he couldn't even hold his toys, which was very sad. We did find a wonderful soothing cream which actually made the ezcema disappear within 2 days of using it, but then it returned. It's been a great 'band-aid' and makes him feel better, but we still needed to find the cause.

I tried changing his bath soap, his laundry soap, our laundry soup, and trying going off dairy. All seemed to help for a bit, only to recur fiercer than before. After one particularly bad day, I decided we better book him in for a doctor's appointment. I was feeling desperate and also came off dairy and eggs at the time. Jason keep saying to me that he bet it was eggs, as I eat about 4 a day. To my utter amazement, his skin started clearing up within a day. Within 3 days he had the best, clearest skin he'd had in 3 months. I was so pleased & devastated at the same time. So happy that my baby didn't need to itch any more, but noooooo, not my eggs! I tried going back on dairy after a week, and he had another flare-up, so at the moment it's no more eggs/dairy for me. Reinventing my diet has been quite a challenge.

Besides this possible allergy discovery, Willem has been sitting unassisted for the last 3 weeks, but shows no signs of crawling yet. No toothy-pegs yet either. Maybe next month :). I introduced solid food this month, and he is loving everything so far. He leans forward, mouth gaping for more, especially for his carrot & pear.

We had a lot of fun in our photoshoot today. It was the first time I didn't have to lean him on pillows behind our grey blanket backdrop hehe.

Below, right: We call this his Uncle James face. 5 year old James pulls this look.