Six Months

Happy half birthday to our sweet, perfect, precious, darling angel baby!  I cannot believe a half of a year has already gone by since we were given the sweetest blessing ever.  Even though it's passed in the blink of an eye, it seems like she has been a part of me forever.  These six months have been more fun and more challenging than I ever dreamed.  Although, to be honest, even the challenging parts haven't been that bad...in hindsight. ;-)  Our little princess is just as sweet as can be.  She loves to laugh, smile, talk, and is becoming more and more fun every day.  It's hard to believe that she isn't a little bitty baby anymore.  She can sit up pretty well by herself, she is babbling constantly, she has teeth, she gets annoyed when she thinks we should be paying more attention to her, she puts everything in her mouth, she pets the dogs, and she is becoming a real, live little person!  Here are some of this month's big deals:

• Tongue:  Started sticking her tongue out ALL the time.  It is the cutest thing ever.
• Teeth: Emily cut her first two teeth during her sixth month.  Just when I thought she was going to be teething forever, her first one came in.  Just a few days later, her second one came through as well.  They're sharp little suckers, so I'm just lucky she hasn't bitten me yet!
• Solid foods:  Although we introduced her to rice cereal in her fifth month, she didn't do well with it, so we waited until this month to try real food.  So far she has had bananas, sweet potatoes, and avocados and has done well with all of them as long as they are thin enough.  A couple times I gave them to her too thick and she wasn't a fan.
• Sitting unassisted:  She is doing really well with sitting up.  She still topples over after awhile, but is doing well overall.  We usually put the boppy behind her to catch her if she does go over backwards, but she's needing it less and less.
• First sickness:  Emmy had her first stomach bug this month.  It was so sad!  She vomited all over herself and everything in her crib one night as she was going to bed, then was pretty lethargic all night, vomiting off and on for a couple hours after the first time.  We called the on-call doctor, did the pedialyte thing, and fortunately she stayed hydrated.  She was pretty much back to normal by the next morning.
• Independent play: Well, kind of independent.  Emily LOVES the bouncer.  She could bounce for hours on end and entertains herself so well while she is in it!
• Cry it out:  This month, we started doing the cry-it-out method with Emily.  Most nights she goes to bed easily, but some nights she still cries.  Regardless, she is doing great overall and is a champ sleeping in her crib at night.  We are still working on naps.  She naps great for her sitter, but not really at home.
• Puppies:  Emmy has discovered the dogs this month and LOVES to pet them.

We haven't gone for her six month appointment yet, but we did all of her measurements at home.  She is 17lbs (60th %,) 28 inches long (off the charts %,) and her head is 17.3 inches (70th %.)  She is wearing a size 2 diaper and six month clothes.

And the precious faces our sweet girl makes:

Biddle biddle,
You are my precious little girl, the little love of my life, my little sidekick, and my little best friend.  You bring so much joy to your daddy and me.  We are so thankful that the Lord blessed us with you and we can't wait to see what he is going to do with your precious little life.  If the next six months are half as much fun as the first have been, we are in for a treat!  Love you more than life!

There's the tongue.

Precious girl.

Eating Daddy's face

Loving the bouncer

Bathtime!

Not interested in posing with mommy.

I LOVE sweet potatoes!

Seriously cute as she topples forward

How the majority of this month's photoshoot pics came out.

TEETH!

Emily with her best friend/boyfriend David at his first birthday party.

Happy to be experiencing her first Valentines Day!

Practicing her modeling poses.

Super blurry pic, but the best one I have of her sitting up.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Remember this post?  Well, here we are a year later!

Hope your day is just as blessed as ours!

Cry it out

These past couple of weeks since Emily's stomach bug have been pretty challenging on the sleep front.  Before she got sick, we'd gotten her into a fairly good routine of going to bed with only one or two wake-ups per night.  To be totally honest, I was rolling with that routine, but I wouldn't say I was happy with it by any means.  She typically had to be re-swaddled at least once per night and it was taking at least an hour to get her to go down.  After the stomach bug, she fought me when I tried to swaddle her, woke up multiple times each night, and was taking about two hours to get her to sleep.  Most nights when we took her up at 8:00 to put her to bed, I never was able to come back downstairs.

After a couple of particularly rough nights, I'd had it with the swaddle fights.  I unswaddled her and just laid her in her crib without it.  Although it took her awhile to get her to sleep, she slept all night.  The next couple of nights, she woke up multiple times and it was still taking forEVER to get her to go down.  On Thursday night, we decided we would begin trying the cry it out method.  I didn't want to go that route, but our strong willed child wasn't giving us any other options.  I must say, there is no way I could've done this with her when we first moved her to her crib.  After a month of having her in her crib, though, we finally felt comfortable trying this method.

Our plan was to just let her cry and not go in at all.  I know that probably seems harsh, but sweet sister knows how much we love her.  Also, we have a video monitor where we could watch her and an AngelCare monitor which monitors her breathing.  We knew that if we did the Ferber method, she would probably cry for much longer than if we didn't keep going in.  We also made a few changes to her routine/room.  We put her down earlier than normal and we also unplugged her nightlight.  After about 30 minutes of crying, she got still and started to fall asleep when the AngelCare monitor started beeping.  She had gotten too far away from the sensor, so I needed to turn up the sensitivity.  I went in her room to do that, so she saw that we were there.  She cried for another 30 minutes or so, but fell asleep after exactly one hour and slept for eight hours.

Friday night we got her to bed about an hour late, and she let us know about it.  She found her pacifier and fell asleep after about 25 minutes of crying, but woke up at 3:15 and cried for an hour and a half.  In hindsight, I should've gone in and comforted her once just so she knew we were still there.  I don't think she would've cried for so long if I had.  If she wakes up in the middle of the night again, I will do that.  She slept for two more hours after that, so I think she got a total of eight hours.

Saturday night, we put her down at 8:15.  She cried until 8:50, when she found her pacifier.  She slept until 6:50 this morning.  Ten sweet hours. 

Tonight, I put her down at 7:45.  One little whimper and she fell asleep.  She normally starts letting us know she's tired about 7:00 PM, so we're planning to just start putting her down for the night when she does this rather than trying to keep her up longer.

Cry it out worked for us.  I have no doubt that there will be setbacks as we go, but for now, things are SO much better.  Emily is even happier than before (which is kind of hard to believe) and we aren't as tired as we were.