Happy half year, baby girl! I can't quite believe how quickly the time is passing. You have grown so much in so many ways this past few weeks. The 6-month old you is so different to the 5-month old you.
For starters, you are sooooo much bigger! Somewhere along the way, a
growth spurt happened. All of a sudden you had an
unquenchable appetite. No amount of milk or solids seemed to fill you. You gained almost 3lb in four weeks taking you up to
17lb 10oz. You went from just nicely outgrowing your 0-3 month clothing to being completely in your 6-9 month wardrobe!!
And speaking of your eating habits,
finger foods are very much your favourite thing on the menu these days. Not content on being spoon-fed any more, you want to do it everything yourself and you get seriously stroppy if it doesn't go your way. So far you have enjoyed:
- Cucumber
- Watermelon
- Apple
- Banana
And it's all gone down really well.... I'm looking forward to your feeding journey now you are 6 months old. You allowed to pretty much eat everything that we eat so it'll be really fun for you to get involved at mealtimes. You always make a grab for whatever is on our plates anyway, so now you can help yourself :D
And if we thought you were vocal before, it was nothing in comparison to how you are now. You are experimenting with you voice so much more. You growl, you coo, you gurgle, you squeal. You can be so loud and shrill sometimes. Other times, you just coo so gently it's blummin' adorable. You laugh loads now too, but still so much more for Dexter than anyone else. Your big brother is soooo funny, apparently.
You are extremely physically active now too. Gone are the days of you laying on your playmat in the middle of the room. Just changing your nappy or getting you dressed is something you fight against daily. You can roll in every direction to get to what you want. You can spin yourself in a circle. And you are really laying the groundwork for getting to grips with crawling. You pull your knees up underneath you and shove your tush in the air, but you tend to just end up wriggling backwards as your hands don't really know what to do yet :P
Things you have discovered you like this month include:
- Your reflection, be it in a mirror or the forward facing camera
- Dexter's toys - they're so much more fun than you own...
- ...in fact, anything that doesn't belong to you actually. You want it all!
- Swimming
As your sleep cycle continues to get more and more established, you are predictably sleeping a solid 12 hours at night from around 6.30pm-6.30am & we have managed to get down to just 3 naps a day now. But as you continue to grow up you continue to become more and more independent. As you sat on my lap one day flailing your arms, scratching my face & grabbing my hair I felt saddened that I could no longer sit with my little squishy and just cuddle. You are far too feisty for that these days. So imagine how forlorn I felt this week when all of a sudden you decided that you didn't even want me to cuddle you to sleep anymore either!
Naptimes were becoming a bit of a battle. It used to be that; you would be tired. We would cuddle and sway in your room. You would go to sleep. Nowadays it's more like; you are tired. I try to cuddle you. You flail & scratch in resistance and refuse to sleep. I give up. Repeat until you are so exhausted you can't fight it anymore. Draining to say the least.
I tried just putting you in your cot one day and leaving you. I watched you on the monitor. You put your thumb in, cuddled Mrs Bunny, rolled on to your tummy & gently drifted off. That was it, naptime cuddles had become obsolete. Then a few days later so did the bedtime cuddles too. You don't need or want it anymore. As it turns out, you fall to sleep better on your own.
On top of that, we've had a clear out of some of your old things. Small clothes have gone to charity. Moses baskets & baby bouncers have been discarded. High chairs have been introduced. Soft toys have been replaced with noisy plastic things that light up, sing & move (très annoying btw!) My little girl is growing up, far quicker than I am ready for it to happen. It's so sad. But at the same time, it's difficult not to be excited about what will happen next...
