Six Months

Hi Shira,

You are six months and two weeks old now. You had your six month check up about a week ago. So, you have started eating food now. So far you are only on the rice cereal, bananas and couple of things from the jar. You were not a natural on your first exposure to solid food. For the first few days you seemed to be licking at the spoon but not really trying to swallow anything. Tonight you showed you've been figuring it out, open the mouth for the spoon, close over the spoon. Although when you close half to two thirds of what was on the spoon squeezes out. No worries, you're starting to get it down. Tonight you put away quite bit, too. The most I've seen you do.
Well your six month numbers are: 18 pounds, 4 ounces; 27 and a half inches long. I didn't get the head circumference measurement but the doc showed us on his computer the graph and you are at about the 50th percentile on that. I couldn't hear the nurse when she read out the measurement because you were too loud. Your weight and length are both in the 9oth percentile. You are getting taller. I am thinking already of adjusting upward your play center height. You can see in the video that you stand pretty tall in it now.
You also now have a tooth. The doctor said that he thought there was one almost out on your bottom row. So, after that I started checking pretty closely. A couple days ago I could feel something sharp and yesterday I spotted it. So, maybe that's why you were having a couple of pretty rough nights this last week.

We also went to a professional photo session yesterday. Your best solo pose is here along with a cute pose with your sister. In the video you are jumping up and down in your play center.

Love, Aba

Learning the Ropes

Hi Shira,

You've been growing and gaining new skills pretty rapidly. You're starting to get some hand eye coordination, reaching for things you see and having some success getting a grip on them. Tonight you even started reaching for bath toys. Until now you've been content to just relax and enjoy the water. You're also starting to sit pretty well on your own. You still go down after a while but you can sit alone for a maybe a minute sometimes. You still like being on your feet but now you're able to keep a fairly good balance with just a little assistance.

There are two things you are obsessed with. Your big sister and food. We are to the point of thinking of giving you your first real food soon. You are about the right age to start trying it now. But you sure watch us carefully and with what looks like desire whenever we are eating. Of course your main technique for investigating something right now is oral. So you are pretty preoccupied with that. I'm sure it will even intensify when we start actually giving you some things.

But your sister? Forget about it. You are absolutely enthralled with her. If I'm trying to feed you with a bottle, I have to shade your eyes so that you can't look at her because you will get distracted and stop eating. I hope what you see her doing is going to result in positive behaviors from you. You can see in the video how you might even get a sore neck trying to keep track of her. Actually, I think it's a good sign that you two will have a strong relationship as you get older.




Love, Aba.