six months!

Insane but true: this little buttercup is SIX months old today!!

We had to do a careful examination of the number and check our math a few times to be sure, but it's true. Six whole months. Six beautiful, fun, perfect months. SIX!!! Ay yi yi.

Aliases: Same ol', same ol'. Millie, Nuggie, Nugs, Snugs. Also we're throwing in some Little Bit (even though she's not?) and Love Bug for variety these days. Original, eh?

Stats: Well, since she went to the doctor about forty times in the last three weeks, I feel pretty safe saying she's right at 19 pounds. Not sure on her height- her next appointment isn't until the end of February. She has moved up to size 3 disposable diapers and is pretty comfy in six-month clothes! She's definitely a big girl (95th percentile at 5 months), so it surprises me that she's wearing clothes sizes that actually match her age!

Stop it right there, Mom. Everyone can quit going on and on about how chunky and juicy and squeezable I am. Enough is enough!

Habits

• Eating: All the sickness this month threw her eating for a loop. She dropped WAY down on the amount of ounces she could eat/keep down at a time (was eating only about 18 ounces a day as opposed to 32ish before) and is still working her way back to normal. Right now she's doing a 5 ounce bottle in the morning and her other four bottles are about 6 ounces each. She's still eating about every three hours.
• Sleeping: She remains a great nighttime sleeper- 8:30 p.m. to 7:15/8:00 a.m.(weekday/weekend) is her jam. Although she's been at daycare for a solid month now (well, minus a lot of sick days), she is still a pretty awful napper there- she may sleep for a total of an hour and a half divided over four naps. She sleeps for another 45 minutes almost as soon as we get home in the evening. On weekends/sick days, she tends to take 3-4 naps per day for between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours each.
• Bathing: As always, she's a huge fan. We still take a bath every other night, but she often showers with me on the in-between nights...she's permanently snotty/congested, so I feel like the steam showers help.

Likes: Almost everything. She really is just the happiest baby ever. Sitting up and eating her toys is great, playing in an exersaucer is amazing, looking at a mobile or hanging toy is fantastic...basically everything is her favorite. Easy to please, this one. She has started really liking listening to stories- she now seems to actually look at the pictures and settle down while we're reading. I love that! She loves when we hold her and dance around, she is fascinated by anything Lola does, and she is a huge fan of looking at the pictures and videos (99% of them are her) on my phone. She also loves rubbing her daddy's beard, pulling my hair, 'flying,' practicing standing on her legs, blowing raspberries, chewing on her Sophie toy (and a few others), covering her face with blankets/burp cloths so that we swish them off and say "there you are!!!"...umm...I could go on for days. She loves life.

Dislikes: Tummy time, obviously...it is the worst. I am doubtful that she'll ever learn to crawl, since it would seem to require laying on your stomach to ever get there. She'll just skip straight to walking. Or jumping, more likely. She also greatly dislikes the otoscope at the doctor's office. 

Undecided about: Whether people other than Mommy and Daddy can hold her. Not going to lie- I love that, ha. She doesn't seem to have separation anxiety in general- I can put her down and leave the room with no problem. But sometimes if I hand her to someone and am standing right there next to them, that's not okay. I do like, though, that she smiles at her teachers when we get to daycare- she seems to love them, and that makes me really happy. She is never upset when I leave, which certainly makes the leaving easier.

Special skills: Well, she's still working on that tooth coming in, and just yesterday we noticed that the tooth's next-door-neighbor is also about to make an appearance!! Two at once!! They doesn't seem to hurt her much in general, but she will cry if I try to move her lips/tongue around so that I can peek at them...so it must be sore to the touch. She is a proficient sitter now and rarely topples over- it's awesome!! She can reach for and pick up toys and bring them to her mouth. She seems to be developing some problem-solving skills, too- if she picks up her paci and it's backwards, she will work on it for quite awhile (trying to get it flipped the right way to go in her mouth) before she gets frustrated and needs help (or figures it out and gets it in)! Her teachers report that she just LOVES 'group time' at school and will watch the teachers read, sing, and do music for the longest time! They say she is always happy and smiley, and that makes ME feel so happy (especially since I know she must be exhausted all day long, ha).

Looking forward: We hope to start solid foods this month! We are planning to do baby-led weaning and Millie is displaying several signs that she's about ready to get started (sits independently, can reach and pick up items, brings items to her mouth, seems interested in what we are eating). I am also looking forward to Millie starting to reach out her arms to be picked up/held. I'm not sure if there's a typical time frame where that is expected to start happening, but I think she's on the verge of it and I just can't wait!!

Oh, you mean reaching like THIS, Mommy?? I like to reserve that for trying to grab your phone or to touch Lola.

It goes without saying (but I'm not one to let things go without saying) that these six months have been the best of our lives. Millie is the fulfillment of everything I had hoped and waited for for so many years, and living my dream is every bit as blissful as I'd imagined.

We were given this book as a gift and it has come to be one of my favorites. I can't read it to her very often because it just wrecks me- at best, I get misty-eyed. Other times...it's a full-on ugly cry. But every page reads like a benediction, and although she is tiny and doesn't understand the words that I'm saying...every one of them is true. Last night it was this page that did me in:

And I teared up because that is what she's done. She shines. She came into the darkness- my darkness, our darkness- and she brought light and every day she brings light and she shines. And right now her shininess is all baby cuddles and babbles and cuteness, but my prayer is that as she grows, she continues to shine. That she will go into other dark places- places dark with suffering, with injustice, with hurt and pain- and she will shine. She will bring light and hope and truth and glow, no matter how the darkness grows. Shine, Millie, shine.

Five Months

Four Months

Three Months

Two Months

One Month