The Schaellings: Six months in

If you can believe it, our little guy is now 6 (6.5, really) months old. And here's what we know so far...

Stats

Weight: 14.5 lbs
Length: 26.25 inches

Likes

Lillian and Laddie (We get the biggest smiles when either one comes in the room, and nursing quickly comes to an end; whatever they are doing is infinitely more interesting than eating.)
Anything colorful
Anything that makes noise
Tags
Grabbing anything within arm's reach
Practicing yoga moves that any yogi would be totally jealous of (usually during a diaper change, making my job nearly impossible)
Gnawing on his hands
Gnawing on my hands
Gnawing on anything that fits in his mouth, really

Dislikes

Getting his face wiped off
Sleeping
Being alone (for even two seconds)
Having what he's gnawing on taken away
Sleeping (Wait; did I say that already?)
Being put in his car seat

So yeah...the sleeping isn't so great. Remember a couple months ago when I bragged about his great sleeping? When we could put him down around 8, he'd wake up once to eat, and then he'd sleep until 7 or 8 the next morning? That's completely gone out the window. Oh, he still goes down around 8 without fail. If you try to keep him up (which I have in hopes that a later bed time and more exhausted baby would mean sleeping through the night), he falls asleep in your lap at 8 any way. Now we're lucky if he sleeps 3 hours for the first stretch. Then after that, I'm up probably every hour and a half...two if I'm extremely lucky and he feels like being generous. Then there's usually at least one stretch during the night, usually around 3 or 4, when he wakes up as soon as I put my head back on my own pillow and we play that game for about an hour.

Our pediatrician was really less than helpful at Timothy's six-month check-up. After hearing how we approach bed time and what we've been doing, his response was, "Sounds like you know all the guidelines. The only thing I can say is that eventually he'll sleep." I guess I wasn't really expecting any earth-shattering advice. I mean, I do quite a bit of my own research online and had read what I could find about "establishing good sleep habits." But I was still hoping he'd have some gem of a revelation I haven't heard about.

I've tried so many different tactics. Formula before bed (maybe it will take longer to digest and he'll sleep better), more blankets (maybe he's cold), fewer blankets (maybe he's hot), a constant stream of lullabies (and not crappy ones...these are lullaby renditions of Journey and Queen), a mobile, teething tablets, a stuffed animal (maybe he gets lonely), the Sleep Sheep he got for Christmas (award winning can't be wrong, right?). Nothing seems to help. Some helped for a day or two, so I'm assuming that was actually just coincidence. The real problem, however, isn't getting him to sleep in the first place. It's getting him back to sleep once he wakes up - and while these solutions seemed to help in the initial falling asleep, they suddenly become ineffective at 3 in the morning.

One good thing about his sleeping, though, is that his 45-minute cat naps seem to be stretching out a little. Some days, we even get a 2-hour nap out of him. I guess I have to look at the bright side. Plus, during the day, he's so dang cute when he's awake (he can be cute in the middle of the night, too, but it's not much appreciated). I mean, how can you stay mad at a face like this?