"He's just a big dude"

Why is Jude still getting up in the wee hours for a snack?
"He's probably hungry. He's just a big dude," said our pediatrician at Jude's 6-month check up on Tuesday. Measuring in the 95th percentile for weight at 20 lbs. 4 oz., Jude is off the chart for height at 28 3/4 inches long.
Our doctor has encouraged us to continue to offer him a variety of new foods and textures since all previous attempts have gone so well. He is eating cereal, fruits, veggies, and even had some chicken this week. Jude also tried chewing something for the first time with the Gerber graduate puffs. The little Cheerio-like pieces also offer him good practice working his fine motor skills.
We met with a developmental therapist this week who will be following Jude's case, but she does not see a need for regular therapy. She will be coming in once a month to see him and check his milestones, but she was not particularly concerned with anything. The best part of her visit was learning some exercises Jude and I can do to help him think more about crawling and developing the muscle memory to do so.
This week, we have also started working on Jude being able to soothe himself to sleep. With his terrible acid reflux bout, we got into rocking him to sleep and holding him alot. Now he has trouble falling asleep without our intervention. In our move toward more sleep independence and better sleep, we hold Jude until he is grogy and he takes it home. This did not go well the first few times, but now he's down to about 10 minutes to fall asleep during the day. The big exception is the nighttime routine, which I think is going to take much longer to adjust. I know he can do it!