6 Months

Phoebe was 6 months old on the 3rd.  She finally started rolling over consistently from her belly to her back at about 5 1/2 months.  She still can't roll back to belly. She is starting to sit up a little bit, but can still only balance herself for a few seconds before falling over.

She is still a very content and easy baby.  She will sit/lay and play with her little toys.  Her favorites are sock monkey, a little caterpillar, and these plastic keys.  Oh and Knox- she definitely thinks Knox is a toy.  I love it when she gets in giggling fits and just laughs and laughs and laughs.  She loves watching everything that is going on.

6 Months Stats (from the doctor yesterday so really 6 1/2 month stats):
Weight- 13lbs (5th percentile- we're on somewhat of a downward slope since she's gone from 50th to 25th to 10th to 5th)
Length- 25.5in (25th percentile)

So the doctor says she is healthy and strong and isn't overly concerned about her weight.  She wants to see Phoebe back in 4 weeks for another weight check and to see if she is sitting up and rolling over both ways.  So the next 4 weeks are operation weight gain.  See below to see what I had been feeding her.  Now the doctor wants me to feed her 4oz of solids at each meal- breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I am  supposed to feed her solids first and then give her the bottle after the solids- as much as she will take.  And then offer her a bottle as a "snack" between meals and at bedtime.  So basically solid foods should be Phoebe's priority now to help her gain weight and play "catch-up".  This seems a little backwards to me because everything I had read says that breast milk/formula is a baby's primary source of nutrition for the first year, but obviously my methods aren't working very well so we'll try operation weight gain.  In four weeks if she hasn't gained an adequate amount of weight (enough to stay on the growth chart)  she said they would probably want to draw some blood and run some labs to make sure there isn't some other metabolic problem.  I'm pretty confident she will be rolling over and sitting up in another month so I'm not concerned about that.

Sleeping- Phoebe sleeps great at night.  She goes to bed at 7:30 and wakes up between 6:30 and 7.  And yes I still swaddle her.  I'll probably stop soon.  I've started leaving her arms out of the swaddle so she can get her paci back at night if she spits it out and wakes up.  She will wake up occasionally and fuss because she has lost her paci.  I used to go in and give it back to her, but I've started letting her find it herself and soothe herself back to sleep.   Naps are still challenging right now.  I read somewhere that the area of the brain that controls nighttime sleep is different from the area of the brain that controls naps.  Interesting.  Maybe that's why she does well with one but not the other. I've dedicated the past couple days and this week to staying home with her so we can work on naps. I had trouble laying her down to go to sleep but I've started laying her down about 15 minutes earlier for her nap (thank you Mary David and Babywise) and she has gone to sleep easier since she is not so tired.  She still is not sleeping very long- 20 to 40 minutes on average.  Hopefully this week we can work on taking longer naps so she's not so tired and cranky.  I miss the days when she would take long naps and even before that when she would sleep anywhere- she's much too alert and not wanting to miss anything to sleep "on-the-go" these days. She used to take a short evening nap in her swing as well, but she has outgrown that now too.

Eating- Phoebe eats 6oz four times a day- 7am, 11am, 3pm, and 7pm.  I'm still pumping...  I pump about 20oz/day and she is eating 24oz.  We are still using our hospital and free sample stash of formula, which we are so thankful for!  Sometime she takes her whole bottle easily but sometimes it is more of a challenge for her to finish the whole 6oz- it takes time and patience on our part.  We started giving her veggies and fruit between five and five and half months.  We've been giving her solids twice a day in the morning and evening (about 2 oz each time), and I'll probably add a lunch time feeding soon.  She love bananas!  She doesn't like peas or avocado, but will eat both of them mixed with bananas.  She has eaten sweet potatoes, carrots, butternut squash, peas, green beans, avocado, bananas, apples, pears and blueberries.  I have some pumpkin for her to try soon too.  I really don't like how messy feeding solids is.  It wasn't a problem for awhile, but the past couple days she has started picking the bib up and smashing its contents all over her face.  She has also started swinging her arms around with inevitably hits the spoon, gets on her hands, and goes straight into her hair...

Diapering- Has been much more interesting with the addition of solid foods.  More to come in another post later this week...

Randoms- She loves to kick water and splash in the bath now.  She laughs and laughs when I squirt water on her belly with her little bath toys.  I love putting little bows in her hair, but she has started pulling them out so she doesn't wear quite as many bows right now. And apparently I haven't taken very many pictures over the last month...