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 :-)