Fiona | 6 months

Half a year. Where has it gone? Six months is my favorite so far. Life has evened out quite a bit: she's sleeping mostly through the night, is as predictable as she's ever been for naps & bedtime & eating, & is pretty content playing by herself. 

Nothing is off limits for her anymore. If she can reach it, she's got it. We've had to start fishing paper & other nasty tidbits out of her mouth. She's so close to crawling. Army crawling she's got down pretty good & can move surprisingly quickly.
She's started sleeping through the night on a pleasantly regular basis. The nights she wakes up, she only wakes up a few times for max 10 minutes. It's totally doable for this mama! She's still in her pack'n'play, but we did get a crib (finally). We just need to put it together. And while she's still waking up some, we have her as far away from the lovely landlady's part of the house as possible, which means she's sleeping in the entry way! Whatever works, right?

She can sit on her own now, & I keep waiting for the crawling thing to click into place. I tried to take some fun photos of her & it wasn't wildly successful. Her personality does peek through though, so I suppose it was a success, just not, you know, all perfect & stuff.

She's eating decently, but it's always a fight over the spoon. I didn't expect a "do-it-myself" attitude to crop up til at least a year! I have to hold her arms down to get anything into her mouth. I got some fillable squeeze pouches that I filled with pureed pears thinking that would help with the spoon issue, but she hasn't quite got the concept down. Most of it ends up squeezed out anywhere but her mouth. So feeding is a messy business. Sigh. 

 She must be becoming more dairy tolerant because I've been sneaking little bites of apple fritters & cheese & sour cream for my chili (it's fall! so hard to have self-control...) & I haven't seen any symptoms! I'm going to take it slow, but I think we're almost done with this dairy-free business!! SO excited to drink a cold glass of milk again!

 Her eyes continue to get more blue. Grandmas, thank you for that!

 This was mostly what taking photos consisted of: she kept trying to crawl off the blanket, take off her headband, eat her shoes...

 This was a close to a good smile that I got. I suppose I'll have to get used to that, huh?

 Love her little toes! I've noticed her feeling things very contemplatively lately. I can just see her learning & figuring things out. I love that!

 I still call her "Sweet Fee", but I might have to come up with a new nickname. She's still sweet, but there's a heavy dose of spunk & spice in there now, too.

 She popped her first tooth through right at six months, & now the other bottom tooth is through. I definitely noticed better sleeping after that! Like my ever-glass-half-full sister said, "Only 19 more to go!" Groan.

 But we're pretty much smitten by her. If we leave her for a few hours, she is sooo excited to see us again! It's tempting to leave her places just to see that!

 This face (below) cracks me up to no end! I just can't get enough of her little expressions & delightful selfness. She's become more than just my sweet babe to smooch on & gaze at adoringly (although I still do that): she's my sidekick, sous chef, fellow shopper, we can even have conversations now! Never mind that they go, "Blah, blah, blah". She is responding intentionally & I love it. 

I'll end with this one. It's not a very "good" photo technically: I used my broken lens, the one that can't focus automatically, so her face is a little fuzzy. The expression isn't a smile...but mmm, this girl. She's got us smitten.