Half a year!

Oh my goodness. I am not sure I can face the reality that a half a year has come and gone since Emily graced us with her sweet presence. I am so much the better for having her in my life!

The past month has seen many new adventures. Emily is now sitting well without support and loving having a better view of the world. She is blowing bubbles all the time and adding some babbling in there every once in a while. She talks the most when she is frustrated about something- whole sentences of jibberish come flying out! I am glad she is trying to express herself. :-)

Sleep has seen a huge improvement in the last week or so. I will not be surprised if we backtrack many times again, but we have been blessed now with 8 hour stretches at night for 3 of the last 6 nights and 6 hour stretches for the other 3. She goes to bed around 6:30/7, so it still means I'm feeding her once in the middle of the night...but once is much better than the 3 I was doing the week before!! I thought we'd had a growth spurt already, but I don't see the fruit of that in weight gain, so perhaps that is still to come.

We also have a nap schedule now- woohoo!! Only took us 6 long months to get there. :-) Emily naps from 9-10:30, 1-1:45/2, and 4-4:30/45 most days. Some days if I am driving back from somewhere in the 12-1 window, she will fall asleep in the car and take an extra long afternoon nap. But either way, the morning and late afternoon naps are pretty consistent now. It is soooo helpful for planning our days and also knowing which tasks to try to accomplish at which nap times. I am sure that now that we are predictable, something will change that, haha. But for now I am enjoying it!!

We started food- finally!!! I am trying to "go by the book" when it comes to allergy prevention for Emily, so I've only breastfed and waited the recommended 6 months for introducing food. It was so hard to wait when I saw all the other babies lapping up cereal, veggies, and fruits many months ago and growing by leaps and bounds. But I do think that this was the best decision for Emily given her genetic "gifts" from us, and I hope and pray that she doesn't suffer from allergies, asthma, eczema, or food allergies in the future. She LOVED rice cereal and sweet potatoes!! She keeps grabbing at the spoon and trying to feed herself. I am trying to go slowly with her and not feed her too much too quickly. But I have yet to see a closed mouth when I have offered a spoonful. She must have my appetite and my metabolism. :-) Tomorrow we are trying oatmeal and next will be carrots.

Emily weighed in at 14 lb 13 oz and was 26 inches long (25% and 50% respectively). I freaked out when I heard that her weight % dropped, but the doc is not concerned at all. She said as a preemie that I saw her start under the chart, whiz way up to 50% when she was bulking up to catch up with her peers, and that she has now most likely settled into her own %. She said I should expect to see 25% or thereabouts from here on out. As long as the doc is ok with it, I am too!

Our new adventure today was sitting up in the grocery cart! Emily is getting too heavy for the front carrier I am using, and I figured she is now sitting up well enough to stay that way for a grocery run. She LOVED it!!!! I plopped her in and she got a huge smile on her face. She twisted and turned to look at everything in the store and got to interact with lots of people. This will make grocery runs much more entertaining for both of us now. :-)

I wanted to post videos here, but I couldn't get it to work. Anyone with a Flip camera know how to properly upload videos onto a blog??? Check my facebook page for videos for the time being.

Wow, this is long. Nap should be ending right about now, so off I go!