Feels Like Home: 6 Months

Half way to a one year old! Pat and I both recall thinking 6 months sounded so old, but now that Finley is this old we can't believe how quickly she's reached this age. This past month has been so much fun. I really would like to press pause for a while because she is absolutely the happiest baby around right now. I know that she may not always be so easy to handle, so I am trying to be thankful for these days.

Some things have changed and others stayed the same:

Finley is now able to spot her bottle from across the room and goes wild when she sees it. She lets out this high pitched screach and breathes really fast while waving her arms around. It's cute, but I've learned not to prepare a bottle ahead of time when she's in the room!

She is splashing in the bath and enjoying herself quite a bit. Water in her eyes hasn't phased her yet!
Finley is very interested in textures and rubs the back of her hand on different surfaces around her, most notably the chenille couch cushions.
Our girl is in the banging toys stage. She will whip her nuk out and bang it on the ground or whatever else she can reach. Sometimes it gets so out of control that she'll whack herself in the forehead, but again she doesn't seem phased by this yet.
Her dexterity is improving as she is able to pass items between her hands, grasp for toys just out of her reach, and put her nuk in/out without help.
SHE IS ROLLING over both ways, though most commonly from her back to stomach to the left. She does get pretty frustrated with being on her tummy for too long.

She is so stinking happy in the morning when we go into get her out of the crib. We usually can hear her talking on the monitor for a while and then go in and get her and she is all smiles. The footies of her pajamas are wet sometimes, so I know she has been chewing on her toes :)

She is usually sleeping from 7pm to somewhere between 6-6:30 am. It's now rare for her to wake up in the middle of the night, but if she does, one of us pops the nuk in and she whips her neck back to the left and falls asleep before we get out of the room. It's funny because this is how she slept in her bouncy seat as a young infant. There must be something comforting about her neck cranked back like that.
She is a so-so napper, but since she is sleeping well at night, we've been a little more relaxed during the day. She usually sleeps at about 9am, 12pm, and 5pm. Her lunch time nap is the longest.
Pat and I have learned that to have a happy baby and thus a happy family, she needs her sleep!

She has also started solid foods. Thus far she has eaten rice cereal and sweet potatoes. Next on the list are zukes and summer squash. Although it's to a lesser extent, she has the same reaction to food as she does her bottle.

If she has pooped during the day, we have started using cloth diapers overnight. It seems to help her mild diaper rash and we are excited to save even a little bit of money that we're spending on diapers.
Finley loves Clifford (the big red dog) on PBS and so we've DVR'd a couple of episodes and she is mesmerized while I'm doing something around the house.
She is still talking a lot! Last week her new noise was this gasping for air sound. It scared me to death at first, but then she would smile and do it over and over again. She also liked to fake cough, but karma has cought up with her and she is actually sick with a cough currently.
She can sit with support of the boppy, but if anthing is around her, she reaches for it and tips over. This is our next skill to master!

Finley had her first babysitter a few weekends ago. Our sitter was our daycare provider's daughter, Amber. I picked her up after we put Finley down, and Amber was so upset that Finley wouldn't be up to play. Finley didn't make a peep while we were gone. We learned that Amber's friend, Ashlyn, was jealous that Amber got to babysit, so I told her to jump in line. A surplus of babysitters is never a bad problem. And at $5/hour, Pat and I need to get out more! By the way, Twilight was totally worth it!

Her new nickname might as well be peanut because she weighs in at a whopping 14 pounds. This is something like the 14th percentile. Our pediatrician isn't concerned, he says she's just recovering from being a gigantic newborn (or something like that).

Oh, and she has her 2 bottom teeth!