Miller Time: SIX Months Old!

How has this day already come?! I cannot believe my beautiful baby girl is 6 months old. I find myself simultaneously thinking there is no way this much time has gone by, and wondering how I ever lived without this little girl! I feel like I say that every month but the feeling has not gone away yet. It is so crazy that the helpless little baby we brought home from the hospital has already become this smiley, bubbly little girl, so full of personality! I am so in awe of all the things she has already learned and all the changes she has gone through in this first half of a year. It is so much fun to watch her grow!

As much as I loved her as a brand new, snuggly baby and think she is growing up way too fast, I am loving this age. She is so much fun! She is a very active little girl, constantly on the move. The baby gate went up by the stairs to the basement last weekend! She is not crawling yet but can definitely move around the room. If you leave her in the middle of a blanket, she can get off of it in a matter of seconds! Between rolling and an inchworm kind of movement, she is all over the place. She is constantly reaching for objects (especially electronics) and has learned to drag things towards herself. She can pull things towards her and get them into her mouth, no problem! She always looks like she is plotting what she will grab next.

Didn't take her long at all to get from the blanket all the way across the room!

Ellison is not sitting on her own quite yet, but we have been working very hard on it. She is very easily distracted when we practice sitting and as soon as she sees something she wants off in the distance, she will tip herself over to go and get it. She sits up very well in her Bumbo or with her Boppy behind her, and has started to do what look baby crunches when we try to give her a bath or buckle her into her car seat.

Practicing sitting...and hopefully inheriting her musical talent from Daddy's side of the family

I had a week off recently so I was able to make my first bunch of baby food with the Baby Bullet I got for Christmas. Ellison has tried plums, pears, apples, and zucchini that I made so far. The girl loves to eat! She has tried 12 or 13 different fruits and vegetables now. She even had peas this week without making any terrible faces!

We had Ell's six month check up yesterday. I worked all night (actually, until 7:30 this morning), and Jay wasn't able to get off of work, so it was just the little lady and one very tired mommy! Ellison weighed in at 13 lbs, 2.5 oz (25%tile) and was 26 3/4 inches long (90%tile). Her weight was the main topic of conversation at the appointment. She didn't gain much weight since her last appointment (six weeks ago, she was 12 lbs, 10.5 oz) despite starting to eat solids. But as I said, she LOVES food! She chows down on solids, and she nurses or gets a bottle 5 times a day. But she is a very active little girl, and Jay and I are not big people. I weighed her at home twice in the last week, so I wasn't shocked by the number on the scale today.

Instead of waiting until Ellison is 9 months old for her next appointment like most babies do, we go back in 6 weeks for a weight check. The pediatrician just wants to make sure that now that she is on a new curve (the 25th percentile), she stays there. We are also supposed to attempt to give her about twice as much food as we had been when we give her solids. We did this for the first time last night and she still ate everything! However, I am not going to force feed her to try to get her to gain weight just so she fits into someone's idea of what she "should" weigh. When I look at her, I see a healthy little girl who is just on the slim side. Her nails are growing, her hair is growing, she is getting longer, and her head circumference measurement has been in the same %tile (75th) since birth. So I am going to make sure she is getting enough food, but I am not going to spend all my time stressing about it!

Overall, Ellison had a pretty good "half birthday". She got a fun new toy, and we also introduced her to a stuffed animal for the first time. She absolutely loved it! She was giggling and squealing at her monkey. So adorable! Unfortunately she did get fussy from her shots as the night went on and had a low grade temp, so she got some Tylenol and extra snuggles and finally fell asleep. I thought we would be in the clear because she did well after the 4 month shots...poor baby :(

One other quick story. The pediatrician said we could introduce Ellison to a sippy cup with water in it, so we tried giving her one last night. She acted like the cup had a force field around it. She wanted nothing to do with it! You would have thought it was full of poison the way she was looking at it. She is always trying to take cups and bottles away from us so it was pretty odd and I found it hilarious!