My Daughter is Half A Year Old…whaaaaat?!

No, I didn’t throw a half birthday party for my Sugar Plum Princess, but she did wear a dress and a headband for perhaps the second time in her life. Solid effort, Mom! She doesn’t seem to mind headbands, so I might start throwing them around that noggin more often so people stop calling her “handsome”. haha! She is a handsome little broad though.

Does this count as a smile, Mom?

I’m not going to say we’ve “hit our groove” because I don’t know if that ever happens with your first child. Right when I think she has a predictable routine, she goes through some mental leap that wreaks havoc on our controlled regimen. So the routine is, I’ll feed you, play with you, look for signs of fatigue, put you down and pray that you sleep for longer than an 30 minutes. She typically has a good reason for refusing to nap.  This morning, she left me exasperated after refusing to nap for, I don’t know, five hours…thereabout.

I plopped her in her jumperoo after admitting my defeat. After a few minutes of jarring bounces, she settled into a comfortable squat. The grunting started and in a few short minutes she was quite literally in deep doo-doo.

Matt followed me into the nursery. We knew we had to tag team this diaper change. I was impressed by her poop’s upward trajectory. As I lifted her legs, she doused the front of her onesie in pee. Matt said he thought we were going to have to “cut her out of the onesie”. haha. No jaws of life were required, but an emergency bath commenced and we have a sweet smelling six-month-old fast asleep in the crib now. I hosed down her onesie, but I’m not confident that it will be appropriate for another wear.

Sorry that I’m so preoccupied with poop. It seems like Skylar’s moods revolve around her BMs these days though, so they all seem like very important episodes. Today’s was just a lovely Mother’s Day gift.

Sums up motherhood for me. Skylar is a headband repeater. –Fashion police reports.

OK, let’s see if I can remember any of the fun stuff Skylar started doing in her sixth month of life:

Sitting! She still has the most fragile ballerina arms, so she’s hesitant to use them as props, but the girl can sit. Her trunk is strong and I’m confident she’ll sprout a pair of guns soon.

Two teeth! They erupted in the same 48 hours and everyone was in pain.

Eating food! I was so relieved when I offered her a spoonful of oatmeal and she leaned in for it like a pro. Back in the horrible post-tongue-tie-revision days, her dentist was concerned about her hypersensitive gag reflex. Since her tongue never touched her palate (early on), she gagged whenever anything hit the roof of her mouth. I thought this would lead to eating problems but I’ve yet to see her really gag on anything! Such a relief. And I know “food before one is just for fun” but gosh, my boobs are relieved to have some caloric backup.

Skylar’s likes thus far: oatmeal, avocado, carrots, peas, spinach, sweet potato, hummus. Dislike: asparagus

Ditched the Merlin Magic Sleep Suit. This marshmallow suit was a wonderful transition tool to get her to sleep comfortably in the crib, but you’re supposed to get the little babes out of them before they start rolling. Plus, I think the puffy sleeves were preventing Sky from self-soothing in some cases. She now wears a sleep sack, which is the only hope she would have of keeping a blanket on her busy legs.

“Hey, where’s my marshmallow suit?!”

*Oh, about rolling over….yeah, Sky did that when she was three months old then stopped. Cold turkey. At our six-month check up, the pediatrician said we should start physical therapy if she’s not rolling in two weeks…cue the mom guilt! I’m not too concerned. I know she has the ability deep down in there, she just has a case of muscle memory amnesia.

New octave. Skylar has been singing for a while now…it’s precious. But there’s singing and then there’s hitting a note so high that it can be confused with the shrillest of cries. Sky has been experimenting with this lately. I hope it’s just an experiment and she doesn’t decide to sing in this tune during our 8-hour flight to Holland this summer.

Bath time is the greatist. But it wasn’t always! Sky has found a love for bath water. She kicks and squawks and laughs her way through baths. We used to bathe her 2x week and dread it. Now, I look forward to her nightly baths. No matter how cranky she is, I can plop her in and she’ll have a ball.

Mom Milestone?

I cried during her shots. I haven’t been fazed at the other appointments, but as I stood there cradling her arms, three inches from her screaming face, my heart hurt. I know moms are supposed to empathize when their babies hurt but before, I’ve easily written shots off as completely necessary pain for Sky girl. This time, she was to get four shots and I wanted to shout “Stop!” halfway through. Four shots seems like a lot for my 16-pound chiquita. She was upset for two minutes. I nursed her after shots and cried for the next five minutes. She was probably like, “Mom, what is your deal?! I’m fine.”

This will be my first Mother’s Day as a mom and I still cannot believe I’m in the Mom Club. I’ll never forget the first time I said, “my daughter”.  I was at CVS, picking up a Vitamin D supplement for Skylar.  The pharmacist said, “Are you Skylar?” and I said, “No, she’s my…daughter!”  It was so fun to say.  Then I realized I left my wallet at home.  I drove back laughing at my mom-brain and smiling about having a “daughter”.  Such a gift.

Three giraffes chilling at the zoo.