Six Months

Six months old. Half a year. How did we get here, especially so quickly?


I cannot believe baby girl is six months old today. The past six months have been full of hugs, kisses, tears, sleepless nights...but more love than I could ever imagine.


It feels like so much has changed over the last month! At the end of December, she was barely getting the hang of rolling from her tummy to her back. Now, though, she's log rolling everywhere she wants without giving it a thought, sitting up steadily and, most recently (beginning Saturday, January 23rd), trying to crawl!


I was going to post about it earlier, but wanted to put it into the six months post. On 1/23 she got herself up on her hands and knees and started rocking, trying to crawl toward my mom. We hadn't ever seen her do this before! She can get her legs going (sometimes forward and sometimes backward), but her arms just don't know what to do yet. She'll get frustrated and eventually raise one arm toward her goal (typically a toy), then lunge toward it, ending in a faceplant. But it gets her where she wants to go.


If she really wants to move forward, she has figured out, though, that if she rolls onto her side, she can kick off and scoot forward some. So this kid is officially mobile!


Beginning 1/17, she also started eating cereal. We started her on rice cereal with some expressed milk mixed in. We quickly gave up on the milk and started using water, though, since she still ate it just fine. She really started to like it a few days into it and was eating about three tablespoons at a time. There was one problem, though--she got constipated. Not just she-hasn't-pooped-in-a-week constipated (she already did that), but screaming-like-a-little-banshee-because-the-poo-is-harder-than-Play-Doh-and-hurts-like-hell constipated. My poor baby. This screaming ended in me running to Kro.ger to get some pear juice, which has seemed to help, eventually (after she worked out all the old hard stuff). We've also switched her to oatmeal instead of rice, which seems to be working out better. As of last night, she's eating 1/4 cup of oatmeal once per day. Somehow we're supposed to start feeding her in the mornings...but with our morning schedules, I have no idea how that's going to happen. We'll work on it.


We go to the doctor today and I will update with her stats later. I expect that she'll be right around 16 pounds, but we'll see!


She's still solidly wearing 3-6 month clothes (thank goodness, since she still has some outfits she hasn't worn yet....) and I'd guess won't need to go up a size for another couple of weeks, at least.


She's also still wearing size 2 diapers. She could wear 3's (we put her in 3's for overnight, which has helped a ton with leaking), but I bought an overabundance of 2's, so she's still in those for a little while longer.


Her hair is finally starting to grow in a bit. It's relatively thin, but it's there! The stuff on top is definitely getting a bit longer. Hopefully she can have some pigtails by the time she's two. :)


She's ticklish now, more than ever. Her ticklist locations include under her arms, the back of her neck, her sides, the base of her ribs on her back, and her thighs if you get them just right.


She has recently started flailing her arms. We're not sure what it means, but it's cute (but dangerous if she's got a toy in her hands).


Her movements are all really deliberate now. It seems she's really gotten the hang of using those hands.


One of her favorite noises is to squeal and I just encourage it by squealing back at her. She thinks it's great.


Another way to make her giggle (which, by the way, is the greatest noise in the world) is to move your face toward her really quickly. Like if she's laying on the ground, I can stand over her and bend over toward her fast and she'll start kicking and giggling.


She still doesn't love the bath, but doesn't hate it. When trying to get her poo worked out, we gave her a warm bath. She and I sat in there for awhile together while she just played with (read: ate) her rubber ducky. We've given her a bath once in the inflatable rubber ducky, but still have a hard time bending over to clean her that way, so we're back to bathing with her.


Still no teeth :) We thought some were coming in, but we still don't see any signs of them.