Six Months of Sass

Hannah, you're 6 months old, and are you ever your own little person.

You are SUCH a daddy's girl.  You have a special way that you act when he is around: You give him a sly little smile, stick your tongue out a little, make soft little cooing sounds, and then flip your head (and body) around so that he has to come around on the other side of me to see you, and then you do it all over again.  It's like you're saying, "Now come over here and get me Dad!"  It's your own form of hide-and-seek just for him.

You have gotten very strong, and easily flip yourself over and over on the floor.  You also flip yourself onto your stomach in your crib and fall asleep that way.  It stresses me out.  We spent a day going in and flipping you back over, until one time you fell fast asleep that way, so now I just leave you be.

You use that same method, when I'm holding you, to turn your whole upper body from one direction to the other and often clobber me in the process.  Seriously, the other day you punched me right in the nose and I was surprised that my eyes filled with tears.  The week before you flipped from one direction to the other and in the process flipped my glasses about 5 feet away from me without even touching my face.

It was a little bit like in Anchorman, when Ron Burgandy is talking to his dog. You ate a whole wheel of cheese?  Heck, I'm not even mad.  I'm impressed.

I was like, "Han-nah!...Wow, you didn't even touch my face, just threw my glasses all the way over there..."

You are still "hugging" me, and Ooooooh, I love it!  I know that it's just because you want to chew on something, or you're hungry, but you when you wrap your arms around my neck and pull me towards you it feels like a tiny little hug!

You've had your first antibiotic for a respiratory infection, and the 10 day course of treatment handled it gradually, so your "schedule" is way off now.  But let's be honest, you've never really taken to the schedule.

I looked at your 2 month post, where you were sleeping 6 to 7 hours at night and thought, I want that!  For the past 6 weeks or so you've been waking up multiple times a night.  At first it was teething, then it was this infection.  I get it, you're uncomfortable, it was hard to eat when you were so congested so you ate less and more frequently.  But 3-6-8 times per night is really wearing on me!!  You've downgraded to 40 minute naps as well.  Now that you're finally off of them I think a call to Jan is in order to get this all back on track.

You had your first visit with Santa.  It was relatively uneventful although Jayce wanted nothing to do with him!

Your stranger anxiety has kicked in, but last week you had a successful stay in the nursery and stayed the whole time.  Chris just had to go in there with you a minute until you smiled at everyone and then was able to sneak away.  This was so helpful since I was teaching in the classroom next door and was sure that I wouldn't be able to accomplish anything if I could hear you crying.  Luckily it's the 5 year old class, so I'm sure I could have easily found a way for them to make enough noise to drown you out, but luckily I didn't have to resort to that.

Your activity of choice now is on your belly, swimming.  No pushing up onto those knees yet, and I'm so glad.  I might have to come over and knock you off of them if you did. (Not really, but please don't start crawling yet.)

You are now in the bouncy seat and exersaucer every day, in addition to your blanket time.  You're far too busy of a roller for the play gym.  I was sad to see it go.

I waited to start you on solids until closer to 6 months, and you HATE them.  Really, it's ridiculous.  After 5 days of the most watered down possible rice cereal, you still cry, buck, turn your head, spit it out, and fling your body around in every direction in your Bumbo seat to try to escape.  I'm going to give it a little break and then resume again in a few weeks.  You have not won the battle, I'm simply waiting for my next attack.

You had your well visit and I was surprised to discover that despite everyone telling me how big you are, that you're actually small.

Height, 26 inches, 55th percentile.  Weight, 15 lbs 6 oz, 38th percentile.  The doctor said he isn't worried about the weight, if you had eaten right before you came to the appointment you would be in the 40th, so it was fine.  But I worry!

It appears that you think you are the boss of us around here.  You eat what you want, sleep when you want, wake when you want.  But you do it all with the sweetest and happiest disposition of any baby that I've ever seen.

You, my dear, are a sweet little handful.  Happy 6 months.