6 Month...aka half a year old!

Every month is a celebration but a half a year, now that’s a BIG one at the Hyde house!  I’m getting a glimpse of what’s to come and I think that we will far love months 6–12 of her first year way more than months 0-6.  Something about her little personality popping out more and more each day, watching her really learn and explore, and most importantly, knowing what is wrong now when there are tears and just the fact that there are far less tears now than in any months thus far.  We had been nicknaming her Pumpky (aka Pumpkin) but lately it’s been Sweets.  Because she is just so darn sweet!

She can now sit unassisted, she hasn’t figured out how to push up into a seated position, but place her in a seated position and she gets along great.  She’s mobile!  Army crawling all over, she will push up onto all 4s for brief periods but normally plops to her tummy and starts army crawling and she can move at a pretty good rate.  Apparently she is self-feeding her bottles at daycare, we’ve tried this at home and aren’t having the same success but she does have the ability now to hold her own bottle and feed herself.

We’ve gotten the green light to start on baby food.  I’m so excited for the transition and think it will be a lot of fun.  She spoon feeds really well, it took a ton of practice but we got there.   Not only did we get the green light on baby food but we also get to experiment with the sippy cup and snacks like mum mums, yogurt melts, and puffs.  I find this all very exciting territory and can’t wait to see what her preferences will be.

I’m loving that she is becoming more independent.  A few weekends ago, I sat on the sofa and just watched her play for a good 30 minutes all on her own.  It was really nice.  I love playing with her and being involved but I also want her to learn to play on her own and we are starting to see this happen more and more.  I feel like we are slowing starting to get to that good mix of us being involved but yet giving her the room to explore on her own.

She still fights her naps some on the weekends.  If she doesn’t nap, one of 2 things happen, neither which are good…  She becomes overtired and will be extremely fussy all day, continually fighting the nap.  Or she will be happy all day, yet refusing to nap but then putting her down for the night is a huge fight and usually produces multiple middle of the night wakings.  Naps are so key.   If she will not go down, we just fight her on it for 2 hours, it’s exhausting.  If after 2 hours she refuses, we let her get up for an hour.  Then the next hour we try again.  Usually we become successful at some point but it can easily chew up a half a day easily just fighting her for one nap, leaving us needing a nap ourselves!  We don’t let her cry but for a minute or two so we will just sit in her room with her with the lights off and no interaction other than rocking her and then we just juggle between rocking to stop the crying and putting her back in the crib.  2 hours of this, it’s painful for all but my book The Sleep Lady says this is the method that must be done.  The dreaded weekend nap fiasco has been our biggest challenge right now.  

Some favorites from her 6 month professional photo shoot

 She has 2 teeth!  I knew she was teething badly, a few times that accompanied with a fever that had her down right super fussy.  Then one morning I dropped her off at Daycare and they told me she has a tooth, WHAT?!  Just popped up overnight pretty much! 

Well that's a wrap for month 6!