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February 17, 2005
6 months old!
To my dearest Ella,
You have gotten so big! When we took you to the pediatrician last week, you weighed 16 lbs, 14.8 oz, and 27.5 inches tall (90th percentile on that height!). For having such short parents, you really are growing fast. You will be towering over us sooner than we had anticipated.
You are still such an easy baby. Your day goes something like this:
6:45 am - Wake-up. This is when I or your Dad go upstairs to pick you up and bring you into bed with us until we are ready to get up around 7:30. You may fall back asleep, but typically you just hang out for a while and talk it up. I'll go get a bottle from the kitchen and feed you a bit of breakfast in bed, too.
7:30-8 am - Time for your solid foods breakfast of mashed bananas and cereal. Yummy! Then you play on the floor for a bit while I empty the dishwasher and perform my morning routines.
9:30 - Nap #1 which lasts for about 1 1/2-2 hours, but sometimes shorter if you wake yourself up with all your morning grunting for the first poop of the day. During this nap, I do as many house chores as possible so that I can give you plenty of attention when you wake up.
11:30 - Bottle #2, then lunch - something like mashed sweet potatoes or strained garden veggies with cereal, then play, be that sitting on the floor with your knitted fish from nana, or hang around in your Janie Jumpup, or stand in your exersaucer while pumping your legs up and down trying to get that dang house to say "Hi ella, this is mommy I love you!". If I am using the computer then you will try and add your input as to what part of the internet we should be reading, or perhaps writing in your blog, you little typist!
1:00 - Nap #2 - About 1-2 1/2 hours of pure relief. Although I love you with my whole being, I need these naps to remain a sane and loving momma.
3-5 pm - Run errands with mommy or play with your toys. You love to jump, whether it is in my lap, in your exersaucer, in the janie jump up or in your highchair. It's kinda a full body bounce, but so cute to watch.
5:30 - Dinner. You are such a good little eater--you enjoy almost everything I've offered you, but I can't wait for you to eat what Daddy and I are eating for dinner.
6-6:30 - Bedtime routine steps:
Step 1: Start the bath water running into little tub, Strip baby down to a poop free exterior, bring aforementioned baby (very important-with a towel) to the bathroom, test water, place baby in proper temperature water, watch baby play and attempt to place any and all solid objects in mouth(this occasionally includes the tub itself, but never successful), suds up baby as desired, rinse baby, wait for first eye rub, rapidly remove baby from tub and place on towel.
Step 2: Move quickly on this step, time is of the essence as we have waited for a cue that you have begun your rapid descent from fun smiley baby, to squaky fussy hungry for some milk baby. So begin by getting you diapered and pajamed up. Then feed 4-5 oz of milk/formula, and place you in your crib. Now this is where the step gets confusing for us, we really don't want to swaddle you anymore, but we can't seem to stop. You like it, we know you like it, and we like it when you like it cause you let us sleep(which we like).
Step 3: The cue for this step is the head turn. So we stand over you in your crib, all swaddled up, and we really swaddle you these days as you are strong(but your dad is stronger) and we wait. You may look up, we may sing you a little verse of "good night sweet heart" and then it happens, the head goes hard to the side, you look at the bumper on the far side of your crib and we move like ninjas in the night, departing the room while you aren't looking. We can tell we are successfull if you are sucking your pacifier so hard that you are kind of moaning at the same time.
Step 4: mom and dad go eat dinner.
A little movie of the bathing cutie can be seen here
That's all there is to it.
4:30 am - make some noises and see if you can sucker one of us to come put your pacifier back in your mouth after you fell asleep, we are pretty easy to sucker, so this seems to work out for you just about every night. :)
Then we start the day all over again.
Some of the things you do that are my favorite are:
- You love your Music Together class - you get so excited when we start to groove to the music.
- you love to be out in the world whether it is on a nature walk or a trip to Tysons Corner Center.
- You save up all your laughs for the afternoon when I kiss your belly. Such deep belly laughs!
- You are starting to anticipate when I will tickle you. I walk my fingers over the floor and up your leg, but before I can get to your leg, you already start to giggle.
and your dad's favorites are:
- the little nose crinkle you do when you smile in that funny way.
- the little pre-speach gutteral noises you make in the back of the car when we are all running errands on the weekend.
- the way whichever one of us is holding you, the other one seems so much more interesting.
- how your idea of petting buddy, seems more like a smack down, then a nice stroke on the nose, but that buddy, seems to understand that all this bashing of his snout, is in the end loving, and just patiently takes it.
Sadly one of my favorites is not on the list of things you do, but on things you don't do. You just don't want to cuddle! What is wrong with us? do we smell? Come on give us a little 16 pounder hug-up in the morning. Sleep on our chest in the afternoon, just give us some cuddling! Don't make us go elsewhere!
Posted by rach at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)