Month Six

Someone had a half-birthday recently! (And I’m not talking about mine last month). Little Miss R turned six months old on the 10^th, and I can barely stand it. I mean honestly. That tongue. I die.

She weighed 14.2 pounds and was 25 inches tall at her checkup, which is right around the 20% range for both. A petite baby, we have! The doctor said she looked great, but I won't lie and say I wasn't a little worried to see her drop off the curve a bit. I'm trying not to dive into that rabbit hole and I keep telling myself that she's a happy and healthy baby and is doing just fine. She is currently wearing 3-6 clothes and it looks like she'll be holding steady there for a while longer.

Play

The big news this month is that she is officially sitting up all on her own! It happened just a few weeks ago. One day she was working on her core strength, balancing between my legs, and the next day she was like, “Don’t worry, Mom, I’ve got this."

We still put pillows behind her and to the side because she does fall over on occasion, but for the most part she just hangs out playing with her toys like it ain’t no thang. She hasn’t yet figured out how to get herself into or out of a sitting position, so when she’s done sitting up she’ll cry until we come over and lay her on her back to keep playing. 

Now that she can sit up, she’s becoming less and less of a fan of tummy time. And while she has been rolling front to back since day four, she still has yet to roll back to front. She can turn completely on her side, even cross one leg over the other, but it seems she has no desire to make the final turn. I’m pretty sure she could if she wanted to, though. She also still loves playing with her feet and toes! When we take her pants or tights off, she gets really excited and kicks her legs so hard!

Not that she lets having tights on stop her from eating her toes...

R also has become a little talker! Her favorite syllable to babble is “da da da,” so Jordan’s all, “She’s saying dada!” I’m not counting that as her first word, however, and I’m working on getting “ma ma ma” going, but so far no such luck. When she’s in a happy mood and talking it is the cutest thing ever. I almost don’t want her to ever learn to talk because the baby babbles are too much. But then again it would be weird to have a five-year-old running around saying “da da da” so I suppose it has to happen eventually.

Right at the end of her six months, she started giving "kisses." At least, that's what we think she's doing. I'll let you be the judge.

Eat

Where do I even start with eating? Okay. It’s basically this: we have no idea what we are doing.*

R ate rice cereal maybe four times total before I decided I wanted to get my puree on. So far she’s tried: bananas, avocado, peas, sweet potato, apples, and carrots. We haven’t found anything she is willing to take more than three bites of before she starts crying, so you might think well maybe she’s just not ready for food. But she totally eyes our food, tries to grab for our forks, etc., so I thought I’d give baby-led weaning a try. So far we’ve given her a cucumber wedge, yellow and green bell pepper spears, a steamed broccoli floret, and a hunk of banana.

The banana was the biggest success and was actually pretty funny. She opened her mouth wide and wanted to shove the entire banana inside and seemed to enjoy it! She was also able to suck on a bit of the cucumber. We found the bell pepper wedges worked well for distracting R enough to give Jordan and I time to eat our own dinner, but obviously she’s not going to be chomping down on a raw pepper any time soon.

The bottom line is that we seem to be unintentionally doing a hybrid of purees and baby-led weaning, and overall we haven’t found feeding R to be quite as much fun as we were expecting. She hasn’t shown a huge interest in anything in particular, and both of us feel like it’s a hassle and just ends up making her mad. I don’t know. Hopefully we can keep experimenting and find a good method that works for us and works for her! I’ll keep you posted. Other than solids, she is still breastfeeding 3-4x a day and drinking breastmilk from a bottle 2x a day, and you can read more about my experience with all of that in this post.

*I wrote this part a week ago, and since then we have had a few better days of eating just in the last two or three nights. She seems to really enjoy a puree of sweet potatoes and carrots that I mixed up and has actually sat to eat for about 5-10 minutes, which is a huge improvement, and Jordan and I are both really excited about it!

Sleep

R consistently sleeps through the night! We totally bypassed the four-month sleep regression, and to that I say hallelujah. She goes to bed around 7:30 and sleeps until 5:30 most nights. Sometimes she will wake up around 2ish crying, but we just go in there and pop the pacifier in and she’s out again. Lord help us when we have to take that thing away.

Naps are still very hit or miss. Typically her naps last only 20-30 minutes, but on occasion she has been known to pass out for a good hour or even two! That’s when I check her obsessively to make sure she’s still breathing.

I honestly think a huge factor in her sleeping through the night is daycare. I can tell that she just gets so tired from the stimulation of being somewhere new with other babies to watch, and especially because she isn’t a great napper, by 7/7:30 she is just done for the day. After feeding, we lay her in the crib and she’s out without hardly a peep most of the time.

Other Notable Events

R had her first official trip to the doctor this month. She was coughing a lot and had a super stuffy nose, and we figured it was just a cold. But then her eyes got all red and swollen and started leaking green goo, so we thought a trip to the pediatrician would be prudent. They prescribed some eye drops and amoxicillin, and within three days she was back to normal! We are thankful it was such a simple solution. We also have had a humidifier going in her room since she was four months old, and I do think that helps the stuffy nose at night.

Her umbilical hernia has improved so much! That thing was a giant, and we were getting concerned about it (it literally had a hook on it and was a bit terrifying), but about two months ago it started noticeably going in on its own, and now it almost looks like a regular belly button! That is an answer to prayer!

^^^I took her to work with me once just for a few hours when I had to take her in to her checkup, and it was so fun.

Average Schedule at Six Months Old

4:30-6:30 [she typically wakes up time between these hours and our morning routine is adjusted accordingly for eating, diaper changes, etc.]

7:15 – drop off at daycare

7:30 – arrive at work

[usually takes a 30-min nap]

9:30 – 5 oz bottle

11:30 – visit at lunch to nurse

[hopefully takes a longer nap]

2:30 – 5 oz bottle

[usually doesn't nap but sometimes does]

4:30 – leave work/pick up from daycare

5:00 – home and nurse

6:00 – eat (solid)/bath (every few days or when needed)

7:00 – nurse

7:30 – bed

Month One // Month Two // Month Three // 

Month Four // Month Five