Claire had her six-month appointment last week, and she now weighs 16 lbs, 11 oz, and is 27″ long, which means that she is in the 92nd percentile for height (last appointment she was in the 99th percentile!) and 65th percentile for weight. I asked if that was okay, and the doctor confirmed that it was totally fine.
To be honest, I thought that she weighed more than 16 lbs. Given how my muscles sometimes ache after carrying her around a lot, I was thinking closer to 20 lbs. Then again, she is moving around more these days, both in her exersaucer and in other ways – but more on that a little later.
The needle segment of the appointment SUCKED. I mean, it’s never pleasant to watch your child be stuck with pointy sharp needles, but it was even worse this time, at six months, than it ever was before. Maybe my hormones were raging and I found it harder to witness, but I think it had more to do with the fact that Claire was staring at me, red-faced, and screaming bloody murder – so loudly, in fact, that one of the other doctors in the clinic came to find out what the hell was going on. Yup, that’s my daughter, all right: she will let you, and everyone in the immediate vicinity, know when she is pissed off! She ended up getting THREE needles this time: the regular two that she got at two and four months, and then the flu shot which had just come into the clinic (I also got the flu shot that day since we were there anyway; it didn’t seem to make Claire feel any better seeing her mother get poked with a needle as well).
Unfortunately, since a baby’s immune system isn’t as developed as an adult’s, Claire will have to go back next month to get a second flu shot. But then her nine-month appointment will be needle-free (YAY!), and she won’t have to get any more vaccinations until she is 12 months. And I know that if I thought that six months was hard, I will be a complete mess at a year!
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We started Claire on cereal at 5 months. Although she certainly improved her eating skills over time, she really didn’t seem all that keen on eating from a spoon. I even tried her with a mixed grain cereal with fruit, but she wasn’t impressed. I figured that she just found it much easier and more convenient to have a bottle, and to some extent I think she still feels that way. But then we started adding some other foods to her cereal.
She wasn’t too taken on the bananas or apple sauce. It made for some funny facial expressions though! The first night we gave her the apples, she would take the spoon in, wrinkle her nose, and then shudder a little bit. It was priceless!
What she did seem to enjoy quite a bit, both mixed in with her cereal and by itself, was butternut squash, and the sweet potatoes (which we just started last night) are a close second.
One thing Claire is REALLY big on is water. Now that she’s six months, I can give her a tiny bit (as in 1 ounce) each day. I don’t give it to her everyday, but I am trying to get her used to drinking from a sippy cup and even just from the cup part itself. When I do give it to her, she is devastated when she has finished and will sometimes whine and cry a little when I bring the cup over to the sink to be washed later. Thankfully, she is also easily distracted at this age so it doesn’t usually last long!
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Claire’s ability to sit up on her own has been developing rather quickly. It feels like it was just yesterday that I had to sit behind her to hold her up a bit when she was sitting on her bum. Then, all of a sudden, she was able to hold herself up! She still topples over a lot, so I need to put pillows around her (although there are times when she still manages to find a spot with no pillows – thank goodness for those connect-a-mats!).
She has also been trying to crawl for awhile now. She used to simply roll onto her belly and would then flop her arms and legs around, resembling a non-swimmer trying to swim, and would get easily frustrated. Neal or I would have to go over and flip her back onto her back, which often didn’t make her any happier, or pick her up and put her somewhere else – like strapped into her seat!
Lately, though, she has been perfecting her ability. She does this funny wiggling/slithering movement where she plants her face against her arms on the floor (or sometimes directly on the floor/mats), raises her bum into the air, and tries to launch herself forward. I noticed a couple of times that she was able to move maybe half-an-inch – typically closer to a toy – but that was it. She is also quite good at being able to turn herself around to face a different direction when she is on her belly.
One afternoon last week, I had her sitting on her mats playing with some toys. As I poured some formula into her bottle, I noticed that she had flopped backwards, onto the pillows behind her. In the time it took for me to check the warming bottle and go pee, she managed to move herself from her spot on the mats to the hardwood floor, where she then flipped onto her back (and thank god she didn’t seem to hit her head on the hardwood!).
NOT where I left her!
That’s happened a couple of times since, including today, when she managed to move herself from the mats onto the carpet. As she tends to do this when I’m not looking, I don’t know exactly how she is accomplishing this – either through rolling over and over, or from her wiggling/slithering motion – but all I know is that I can no longer assume that my daughter will be in the same spot where I left her when I step out of the living room for a second or two!
So I am now plagued by nightmarish images of Claire “suddenly” learning how to crawl (in the same way that she seemed to “suddenly” develop the ability to sit more or less unassisted) and toppling down the stairs when I’m not looking. Thankfully, we bought a baby gate awhile ago, so I emailed Neal this morning to inform him that he will be installing that very soon. Perhaps tonight!
