So I've been meaning to catch up but let's be honest and admit that that's never going to happen. So we'll see if I can start here and keep up (
hahahaha, yeah...)
Chani is almost six-months-old!!! I cannot believe it. She's growing so fast and she's so little-big. She's little in the fact that she's still firmly in the 10th percentile (90% of babies her age are bigger than she is), but she's big in the fact that's she's added about 6 inches and 6 pounds since she was born. So she's now almost 13 pounds heavy and about 23 inches long.
She's still dealing with GERD, but it's getting better now that she's on Zantac and starting solid foods. She's been able to roll over for about about month and a half now, but she just recently starting doing it voluntarily and liking it. Before about a week ago, she would go from her back to part of her tummy touching the floor and either grin at you and flip back on her back or she would swing her top leg out and scoot along by grabbing the blanket with her toes. The first time she rolled over without being coaxed or tricked was when I left her on the floor playing on her back and when to get her bottle out of the warmer and came back to feed her and she was on her tummy. I was gone literally ten seconds!
She has done all of her firsts when I'm in the same room but not directly interacting with her. Her first smile was at Tara when I was holding
Chani facing her. Her first laugh was for Tara when Tara was playing with
Chani on her lap, and I was sitting next to them reading. The first time she rolled over was when she was on her tummy and she looked for Tara's voice.
------------Actually I think this proves that she's really Tara's baby and doesn't like me. :-P
Chani's hit all of her miles stone early or right on time. She can sit mostly unsupported, she's standing up and balancing really well. If she has a hold of something she can stand up forever. She looks like she's surfing a lot of the time, but she has really strong legs. She's making noises constantly, and she's loves to smile and laugh. She really likes the dogs, just seeing them makes her giggle even if she was crying a second earlier.
While it's nice that's she's developing according to schedule, I miss her being so tiny. I was lamenting to my mom the other day that I feel like I'll never catch up with her. By the time I'm comfortable with a stage she's in, she's already moved two stages ahead. And her being more and more mobile and dexterous has their frustrating, funny, and frustratingly funny moments. I'll leave you with two anecdotes.
So the time that Bryce and I most see the changes in Chani's strength is when she's upset or curious, and there's one place that those emotions show up more than any other.....her changing table.
When she was a newborn, diaper changes were fast and easy because you moved her how she needed to be, and she did not fight back. Now she's strong enough to pull her feet out of your grasp, and twist her body as the waist, and arch her back. All at once.
And if she's being a good baby and not doing any of that, then it's because she found something with her hands and she's focused on it....usually the clean diaper that she grabs from where you have set down for easy reach when you're done cleaning her. So then proceeds the tug of war to retrieve the diaper from her grasp before she wets everything, and without tearing part of the diaper against her baby razor nails.
But, since her favorite thing to explore is still her body one day I heard my husband shout, "Chani! Will you please stop grabbing yourself?" So I tell Bryce that she's just exploring and it's normal at this age. He says,"I know it's normal. It doesn't bother me that she does it, it bothers me that I can't get her to stop so I can fasten the freaking diaper!"
The other thing that the changing table is good for is the dreaded booger sucker. She's had a couple of colds and the nasal aspirator is really great because it keeps her breathing, but it's gotten a lot harder to get her nose clear now that she pushes against my arms with both hands and both feet while turning her head from side to side and screaming.
So for this most recent cold I got a battery powered sucker because I just wasn't able to clear her sinuses out well enough with the other one. In the instructions it says to be careful not to insert the tip too far into her nose and to make sure that the tip opening doesn't touch the inside of her nose. Now the tip is silicone, extremely soft and flexible, and before I used it on her I held it against the thin, easily bruised skin of my inner wrist and was not able to leave a mark on my arm of any sort....but I'm still very nervous that I'm going to do something wrong and hurt her.
Last night I fed her some carrot baby food, gave her a bath, and started to suction her nose. She had been doing really well with the new aspirator, but now that she's very tired and over stimulated Chani starts turning her head and screaming when I start. And with her doing that I know that the tip hit the inside of her nostril so I stop to look and make sure she's okay. When I do that I notice a reddish clearish bit on the side of the aspirator and I freak out and start checking her nose, sure that I'm a horrible mom and I gave my baby a bloody nose trying to get the boogers out of it. And Chani starts to giggle, and there's no deluge of sticky red from her nose so I look closer at the aspirator....it's not bloody boogers. Yep. It's a little bit of carrots.
I promise to blog more regularly, and if there's anything you want explained that's missing from this blog, just leave a comment and I'll email you the story.
Amy
