What's up - the 6 month Lucy update

With lots of world events to comment on I know you've been sad to see the never ending display of baby pictures and the oh so targeted (to grandmas) videos of Lucy eating, but this is still a baby post.  (I'll do a run-down of my hot button issues in a separate post.)

Let's get the baby stuff out of the way first,  our peanut will be 6 months old on the 1st.  SIX MONTHS old, holy crap.  Before we know it she'll be running up and down the stairs, having friends over, then turn sullen, and boom she'll be off to college.  Right now she is sleeping, which is nice.  "School" is closed today, which worked out well because Jason has the day off and is on Daddy duty.  He did the morning cereal feeding, played with her until 9:00 when the AM nap became evident.  (You know, when I want a nap at 9 am, people accuse me of being lazy but when the baby does it, it is fine.  She gets away with everything.)

Napping Peanut

Lucy still puts herself to sleep at night without too much fuss.  We have a bath, a bottle, read a little and then down she goes.  Sometimes she fusses for a few minutes, sometimes she's silent before we hit the bottom of the stairs, last night she wasn't tired at 6 so we played until 7 when the eye rubs (the international Lucy clue that sleep is needed) became consistent.  Since we're trying to move the 6:00 pm bedtime up the extra hour of awake was great.  I don't think we've completely migrated to a new bedtime, but we're seeing hopeful signs.

We have a trip to Denver in our future and I'm worried that the time change will be enough to mess with the progress we've made.  However, it should work in our favor while we're there, getting to sleep into 7am local time will be nice.  When we head to Maui and the three hour time difference is in the other direction that could be ugly.  She'll be a year old at that point and hopefully more adaptable on her sleep schedule. A mother can hope, right?

For naps, sometimes Lucy needs a little coaxing to relax.  Just now she was in her crib crying, so I picked her up and snuggled her until she relaxed.  It is a dangerous, but super satisfying action.  Her little body relaxed on me is a really maternal feeling.  I certainly don't want her to get in the habit of having to be rocked to sleep, which is why even with the pre-nap snuggles I make an effort to place her in her crib before she's fully asleep.

Skill wise, she's on fire these days.  She hit a developmental milestone that may seem trite, but she's able to move objects from one hand to another, and she's reaching like mad for stuff.  You should see her go for the tub toys that are floating just out of reach.  She can do full yoga moves to get what she wants. 

She's sitting up with little assistance and the face plops are few and far between.  Mostly she needs help not falling sideways or when she arches back not to whack her head on the floor.   She's interacting with her toys a lot more too.  In addition to the crinkly toys that were so popular at first, she's digging the balls and the toy cars that Jason brought home.  I like that it won't be all dolls, and kitchen toys in our house - toys that Dad likes are ones that Dad & Lucy can play together.

We head to the pediatrician on Monday and will get the official weigh in and our instructions for the next few months.  I think of these as report cards and am happy when we get a good review.  I'll update you all with the stats on Tuesday.