6 Months

Happy Half Birthday to this squishy, sweet little girl!

It’s kind of tradition to do a before/after picture at 6 months, so let’s see how much this kid has grown, shall we?

Yup, big difference.

Avery is everyone’s favorite around this house. She will grin at anyone if they so much as look at her, so it’s impossible not to be won over in a split second. She is loud (both when happy and when mad), bubbly, and slightly on the enthusiastic-bordering-on-crazy side. 

Here are a few other factoids about Avery at 6 months old:

She’s a mover, this one. It’s a totally new experience for me since Sadie and Ellie showed no interest in moving until they were at least 8 months old. I really wish it hadn’t been my third kid who decided to be mobile, though. We have SO many more tiny toys around our house (think: Squinkies – hate those things) and it’s so much harder to get the girls to remember to not leave them on the floor. Avery can push herself up with her arms into a part-crawling position, but her favorite means of getting around is rolling. She rolls from one side of the room to the other in an instant – especially if she sees something she wants. She can also sit up unassisted for a couple of minutes at a time.

Sleeping is still a huge challenge. If I had written this post a month ago, I would have been raving about how well she’s doing and how she’s been consistently sleeping through the night. Then teething started. And she got a weird stomach bug. And we visited my parents for 5 nights. And (now) she’s sick with a cold. Result? Good-bye sleeping! I think I’m just going to have to settle for the fact that this girl will never be a good consistent sleeper and I’m destined to spend the next x number of months completely sleep-deprived.

Speaking of sleeping, she’s developed a couple of note-worthy sleeping habits. First, she sleeps on her stomach probably 90% of the time. It worried me at first, but now I’m learning to be okay with it. And I love to walk into her room to the sight of her cute little bum sticking up in the air. Second, she’s decided she needs a binkie again. I think it helped soothe her while she was teething and now she thinks she needs it all the time.

Teething! She cut her first tooth right after she turned 5 months and her second a week or two later. I miss her gummy smile, but those two little pearly whites sure are adorable.

We’ve given her some baby food, but not a lot. It’s so much harder to find the time to sit down and feed her! I’ve actually been doing a little bit of baby-led feeding, which is basically just starting your baby on table foods right away. I’m not die-hard because I think it’s important they learn to eat with a spoon, too, but I like the basic idea of it. I gave her an avocado the other day, which she loved. She’s also had baby food pears once and baby food carrots once, which she did okay with as well.

She’s figured out peek-a-boo and one of my favorite things she does is she’ll start spontaneously playing it with whomever is looking at her. Sometimes she’ll pull a blanket or toy over her face, but sometimes she’ll just put her head on the ground, then pop it up with a big smile on her face. Love it.

She has also developed an early case of separation anxiety. She goes ballistic whenever I walk out of the room and is instantly fine again when I pick her up. I try to look at the bright side and chalk it up to her intelligence (because she's smart enough to realize that I'm a separate human being and mom and I might possible be leaving her FOREVER) but really all it is is one more thing to add to the circus that is our house lately. 

It's hard to believe it's been six months of this circus and we're still going strong. Here's to the next six (and beyond)!