Six month update (belated)

I can’t believe that we’ve made it to six months.  Really, I can’t believe it.  The baby is HUGE - she weighed 18 lbs, 12.5 oz and was 27 inches long at the pediatrician this morning.  How on earth did I produce a baby that enormous!  Related but just as amazing, I can't believe I made it through six months of breastfeeding this tiny wildebeest.  Definitely the hardest physical challenge I've ever had - and I've trained for some gnarly races, and was a competitive swimmer before that - and I'm so proud that we've made it this far :)

It’s hard not to make comparisons to when she was a newborn to see how far she’s come.  We spend all of our time outside now, and she’s just so fascinated by the sights, sounds, and smells of summer.  She’s strong, energetic, and willful.  She eats solid foods like a champ, and we haven’t really found anything that she doesn’t like.  She uses our bodies as her own personal jungle gym, and sometimes it’s all we can do just to hold on to her!  She’s such a little person now, one who finds things funny as well as frustrating (she’s always found things frustrating...and let us know about her displeasure).  Our ASL “sign of the week” this week was “silly,” as that’s what she loves - watching her parents act silly.  Her very favorite thing of all?  Her daddy making turkey gobble sounds :)

These comparisons, however, are all colored by the terrible winter that dominated her first few months.  She’s a completely different (happier, more engaged) baby when she’s outside, and most memories I have of her early months are shrouded in dark, cold, and being housebound.  I kind of feel like Carrie Ingalls, who never really recovered from The Long Winter of 1880-1881 (well, except I didn’t almost starve to death, so there’s that).  This past winter profoundly changed me, more than it should have, such that the gloriousness of simply walking outside hasn’t faded.  Maybe it never will.  That sounds dramatic, but it really is a profound change that creates a sharp delineation in my mind between “Maya the newborn” and “Maya the thriving six month old” that augments my perception that she is just blooming now.

As for new developments, her milestone accumulation between four and five months was far greater than between five and six months.  She hasn't really gained any new physical skills - no crawling yet (it’s a loooong ways off, in my opinion), not much coordination on her feet, etc. - and her speech is about the same.  She reliably makes word-like sounds, but doesn’t really connect any of them to objects.  She reliably understands words (and signs) that we make, but she hasn’t quite figured out that she can make them, too.  There was one moment last week when we were playing with the cat and I kept saying “It’s Abby!  Such a good kitty, good Abby!” and so forth and Maya looked right at her with excitement, reached for her, and gave a throaty “Uuuuuhhhh!” unlike any noise she’s tried to make before.  And I said, “That’s right, it’s Abby!” and Maya did it again.  And again.  Maybe it was just a sound of excitement, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a few months down the line, some approximation of “Abby” ends up being one of her first words.

Signing is going pretty well, too.  Husband and I are maybe not quite as consistent as we should be - it’s hard to make signs while holding the baby in one hand and some baby accoutrement in the other while also talking to her - and it’s not like she’s signing back to help motivate us.  We’re also having a hard time communicating to her abstract concepts like “more.”  Mostly she just looks confused.  But there are definitely some object signs she absolutely knows, and her face lights up when we make them, even when not accompanied by the corresponding spoken word.

ASL signs she understands:

• milk
• bath
• bubbles
• up (read: rescuing from crib/high chair/floor)
• our name sign for Abby

We’re still working on “Mama” and “Daddy.”

After two glorious weeks of (basically) sleeping through the night in early June, we are now back in the land of waking up all night and nursing a million times.  This past week, she’s also been incredibly fussy during the day and very clingy, mostly to me.  Maybe she’s teething (maybe I see a hint of lower incisors?), maybe getting over her cold, maybe a growth spurt, maybe just random.  Whatever it is, we’re hoping this phase ends soon and we get back to some good sleeping, for her sake and ours!

And that’s the six month Maya in a nutshell.  She’s a feisty energy ball who hates napping, wants to be right on top of you all the time, and weighs a whopping near 19 lbs and so creates a fairly large appendage to drag around :)  We are headed to Traverse City to visit some friends for the 4th - a very short trip, but we’re excited!! - and to eat some CHERRIES, so we should have a bunch of great photos (maybe even some beachy ones!) for the next blog post.  Until then, happy summer, everyone!