6 Months

Once again, I'm typing another blog to represent another month that's gotten away from us, and I'm finding it hard to believe this chunky little girl was inside of me just over 6 months ago. 

I feel like this last month has been a big one for Elise. She's made quite a few changes on us quickly. We've really been on our toes and have had to adapt very quickly! I'm proud to say that we are doing well so far! Somehow we've managed to pull together in these last few months (as difficult as they may have been) and really work together as a team. 

Some of the changes/highlights from this month:

Elise has recently started solid foods! We have really gotten into Baby Led Weaning (if you have a little one close to 6 months, I highly recommend looking into this book!). So Elise has tried a myriad of "big girl" foods. Some of it has been mushy baby food fed with a spoon, but she's also had apple slices, breadsticks, banana pieces (that she peeled herself!), avocado chunks, graham cracker, and even a cupcake on her 6 month birthday celebration. We have yet to find a food that she doesn't just immediately gobble up. She has loved everything so far. The trick with BLW (baby led weaning), is that "food before one is just for fun". So she is trying and playing with many different foods, but she doesn't yet depend on any of them for actual nutrition. She is still breast fed for that and even with all the new foods she's eating, she hasn't dropped any nursing sessions! Except....(moving onto the next big change)

Elise mastered rolling over both ways while we were on vacation to Oklahoma. This is great for her development and mobility. Bad for us in terms of sleeping. Once a baby is able to do that, swaddling them is no longer safe. We caught her rolling over while wearing it and without her arms free she could suffocate. So we pretty much had to quit the swaddle cold turkey. (Cue panic attack). Elise has been a swaddled baby from day one. She has always been so squirmy and it's been the only way we could get her to go to sleep. Though we've had our suspicions on our comfortable she was while asleep in it. She moved around in it a lot and as you well know, woke up frequently in it. Her sleep routine (or lack thereof) has by far been the most challenging part of being a parent for my husband and I. I never expected it to be that hard or long lasting and it was something I wasn't prepared for and it had really begun to take a toll on me mentally, emotionally, and physically. I was stressed to the max trying to find ways to get her to sleep and stay asleep. I stressed about taking her places where her "routine" could be disrupted and was very apprehensive about putting her in a Mother's Day Out program because it involved naptime. I imagined her melting down everyday and never being rested when I picked her up. My shoulders are tensing up just thinking about it all now.

Anyway, we are forced to remove the swaddle from the equation. My uh-mazing mother in law pulls out her incredible resources and finds something called the "camping out method". (google it!) We figured we needed to try something and we knew that a big problem with Elise was that she wasn't able to put herself to sleep and that's why she was waking so much every night. So I started doing the camping out method during naptime. It wasn't awesome. It involves crying (which I'm not a huge fan of, but who is?), but my husband and I liked the idea of us at least being in there with her while she's crying. My issue with CIO is leaving her alone to cry by herself. I'm not naive, I know that she will cry countless times in her life and crying doesn't hurt her. I just am not okay with her crying alone in her room feeling like I abandoned her. I feel like under the age of one, that simply isn't necessary. So me being in her room with her, patting her back, made both of us feel better. And apparently it's working better for her too, because we are all getting more sleep! (cue the hallelujah chorus!) I'm even starting to feel like I might be able to start exercising again which is exciting. I have so much catching up to do, it's not even funny!

Elise has found her "big girl" voice. Which means that she is babbling much more. I took her to HEB to grocery shop last week and she just sat in the cart and hollered pretty much the whole time. She wasn't upset or crying....just yelling and talking loudly. It was pretty adorable.  She talks a lot more to us now, when we go out to eat, drive in the car, or get around a big group of people. We love watching her learn new things and we are really enjoying the age she's at right now. She's so much fun to be around and really responds to us when we interact with her.

It's been a crazy month, and time obviously isn't slowing down anytime soon. We are hoping that the deployed months coming up also come and go just as quickly. We feel like we are really doing the best we can to make the most of our time left together though. No such thing as too much time together or too many pictures. So here's a few from the last month!