Six months

Yesterday Maren turned six months old. 

Time is flying! It is hard to believe that she is an "older" baby now, not a tiny newborn. At the moms group that I go to there have been some really little babies that have come, and Maren seems like a giant. I remember when she was so little, and I went to these groups and could not believe the size of three-month-old babies, let alone six-month-olds. I am so glad that we have the photos and videos that we have, because it would be so hard to remember how much change has happened over six months. She is still so little!

This past month has been very exciting, in that she is learning to do lots of things. She reaches and grabs like a pro, and is gaining a lot of strength and body control. She can sit up for longer and longer periods of time on her own, though we still have to keep our hands/arms very close, as she falls eventually. She is making some significant progress towards crawling, though she can still only move herself backwards. This backward motion is completely unintentional, and sometimes quite frustrating for her. But it is lots of fun watching her try to figure all this out. She is also babbling, and trying out lots of different sounds, including some that are very high pitched. She is particularly interested in "p" and "b" sounds these days.

The most exciting thing in the past couple of days is that we have introduced some solid food. We started out with baby oat cereal, and the first time she had it she was very unsure. But now today, the third day, she is starting to really get into it. She still isn't sure exactly what to do when the food goes into her mouth, but she is working at it and learning fast!

Yesterday we gave her some banana. At first we tried to let her pick it up herself, but it was too slippery and quite difficult, so Jeff helped her out. This video is kind of long (about a minute and fifteen seconds), but in my opinion is worth watching :-)

Today for Easter we decided to try out carrots. We tried them two ways: first, I looked up how to make mushy carrot sticks so that she could grab them and eat them herself, and we also tried a carrot purée. She tried both, but had somewhat of a hard time with the carrot sticks and didn't eat much. She really enjoyed the purée, but her high chair tray appears to be permanently stained orange already, and I imagine her clothes/bib are also. Solid food is messy, but awfully fun :-)

Happy baby times

Sleep seems to be better this week. It seems that no matter what time Maren goes to bed, she wakes up at the same time. Tonight she was definitely ready for bed at 5:30 PM, and was last night as well. Both nights we had her sleeping by about 6 PM, and even that seems to be pushing it – she seems overtired and cries as we get ready for bed every night. But she has been waking up pretty consistently at 5 AM or 5:30 AM, so going to bed early just means getting more sleep. Today she magically napped in her crib for about an hour, which is the longest she has slept on her own, ever. I have heard from other moms that their babies eventually started taking longer naps after a long period of short naps, so maybe this is a sign of change. In any case, she seems more rested, and has been a happy baby this week.

She has been going through a period of rapid motor development. She is getting closer and closer to being able to sit on her own, and keeps working at trying to move forward, though she still only pushes herself backward :-) The most notable change is that she consistently reaches and grabs things and puts them in her mouth. She is definitely getting ready to start eating solid food, which we plan to start next weekend on her six-month birthday.

Things are generally going well, and we continue to be very happy and positive. There are times when I am anxious about things but this tends to pass, and most of the day every day we are just happy to have our little bug in our lives.

I couldn't resist posting one more jolly jumper video. I think this one is worth watching :-)

Tired but jolly

Maren continues to have some difficulties sleeping. The past couple of days she has been tired all the time, especially yesterday. It seems like she wanted to go to bed all day, but naps were short – sometimes only twenty minutes long. However, she took six naps yesterday, and was tired in between, so it seemed like the whole day was revolving around tiredness and attempts to sleep. Finally, at about  5:30 PM we set about getting her to bed for the night. At first it seemed like this was what she wanted, and she did fall asleep temporarily, but after a bit of a scream fest, I brought her back out and she watched us eat dinner. Then it was back to bed, a short sleep, another scream fest, and repeat.

She had been showing signs of having the beginnings of a cold, and I think she might also be teething. So finally, after not being able to figure out anything to console her, we gave her some Tylenol and as soon as it kicked in she was out. So I imagine that she must have been in some pain either from a sore throat or teething or something. It is terrible not being able to help your little one, not knowing how to help because you don't know what is wrong. But I was happy that finally we were able to figure out something that made her feel better.

Today she definitely has a full-blown cold, and her naps haven't been any better, and she didn't sleep any later even though she was up later (got up at 5:30 AM, so I guess that is a little later than her occasional wake-up time of 4:30 AM), but nonetheless she has been a happier little baby today.

Last weekend some friends of ours gave us a jolly jumper to borrow for a while. Their daughter is too old for it, and they have a baby due in June who will be too young for it for a while, but Maren is just the right age for it right now. It took her a few tries with it to figure out how to jump, but now she absolutely loves it. So despite being quite tired she is a happy kiddo, which makes us – despite being quite tired – also very happy :-) 

Early to bed, early to rise

The last few nights Maren has been going to bed earlier and earlier, and waking up earlier and earlier. Last night around 5:30 PM she made it absolutely clear that she needed to go to bed. When she wants to sleep, if we try to keep her awake we just end up with a screaming baby. So, last night we started getting her ready for bed a little after 5:30 PM, and she was sound asleep by 6 PM. In a way it is nice to have the evening to get things done, etc., but it comes with a downside: this morning she was fully awake at around 4:30 AM, ready to get up for the day.

For a long time, she was sleeping about twelve hours at night, so early bedtimes were not such a problem. But now she is sleeping more like ten hours at night, so when she wants to go to bed extra early, it is somewhat of a problem. Tonight she was asleep closer to 7 PM, and the number of hours she sleeps at night is variable, so I am hoping for a good twelve hour night and a 7 AM wake-up time, but we will see. When she doesn't sleep as many hours at night, it means more naps during the day (like five), and that means that some days it seems like all we do is try to help her get to sleep – she is still having some trouble getting to sleep for naps.

This morning Jeff got up with her at 4:30 AM, and then around 5:30 AM it seemed like maybe she wanted to go back to sleep so he brought her back to bed. She nursed, and did go back to sleep, but unfortunately only for half an hour or so (the length of all of her naps). So then I got up with her and let Jeff sleep a bit. I am hopeful that this will be a short phase, but it's hard to say.

Also in the past week we had our first true middle of the night wide-awake baby. She woke up around 2 AM, and although I think she was quite tired, did not go back to sleep until around 4 AM. That was a bit rough. I know that some people experience this from the get go, but this was our first time dealing with this kind of thing. Usually in the night she wakes me/us up when she needs to nurse, but she doesn't fully wake up herself, and I hope that our two hour wide-awake experience was an anomaly and not a preview of things to come. We have been very lucky so far to have a very good little sleeper, and I am really hoping that any difficulties are short-lived :-)

Maren's current new developments include ever increasing strength during tummy time, responding to her name (probably just in the past day or so), and making many new sounds. We saw some friends today and one said that Maren makes sounds like a dinosaur :-) She also grew in length sometime during the past week (it seemed to happen overnight), so I think we are going to have to move her into some different clothes soon! Below is a video I took this evening – it's not super exciting but it does show what she is like right now!