So our little girl is 6 months old. I took Isla to her 6 month doctor appointment last weekend and our little munchkin is no more - the girl is no longer smaller than her sister was. Isla weighed 17.5 lbs and was 26.5 inches - 75% for everything. She grew two full inches in two months, and is now a full inch taller than Sawyer was at this age, and a little over a half pound heavier. Not that I expect them to be the same, but I find it so interesting to see how they are alike and different.
I've mentioned before that Isla is a roller. She's continued to get better, and while not yet crawling (her butt is still not off the ground), she does scoot backwards, spins in circles on her stomach and just generally can make her way across a room. I was telling Mark about how I went in her room at 2:20am and she was facing one direction in the right side of her bed, and at 2:26am she had done a 180 and was at the whole other side of the bed. At any rate, I wonder if all this moving will mean she crawls early, and whether that means she'll be up walking early as well. Sawyer crawled at 8 1/2 months if I remember correctly, but was more interested in walking, and therefore only crawled for about a month before she insisted we hold her hands and walk and by 11 months she was off an running. Isla is so nosy and curious that I believe her walking may be the key to my losing the rest of this baby weight.
Isla is still not sleeping through the night but we're getting closer. The other night she slept from 7pm - 6am, which I would take. We just need some consistency. It is sometimes tough to get her to eat enough during the day - she's just not interested somedays and pushes her bottles away - but then she's up screaming to eat anywhere from 2-4am. We're rapidly approaching the point where we need to let her cry but she screams her head off so I find that tough to do. I tried it on Friday night by letting her cry about an hour, but eventually caved and she took down 4 oz before she went back to sleep for the night. The doctor told me I was spoiled with Sawyer being a great sleeper and thinks Isla's sleep patterns are fine and that eventually she'll just drop the bottle. That's all fine and good, but I stand by my statement that sleep deprivation is a terrible form of torture.
Oddly enough Isla is a good eater of food. While I have trouble getting ounces into her, she seems to love baby food. She no longer cares what we give her - loves cereal, fruits, veggies, everything. This is in stark contrast to the dramatics we used to get from Sawyer who hated cereal and any and all veggies. The other weird thing I've noticed is Isla has no interest in feeding herself. She refuses to hold her bottle and doesn't want anything to do with the spoon she eats from. Sawyer could hold her bottle by the time she was 4 months and grabbed at everything we gave her. I wonder now if I should have recognized this as Sawyer's independent streak in its earliest forms, and if maybe that means Isla will be more laid back, but I know I'm overanalyzing.
Isla is also such a happy baby. She has a great smile and when she's happy will often just stare with her mouth gaping open in a giant grin. We love it. She does have some strong opinions though and isn't afraid to let us know. She hates to be left alone and often makes a huge fuss if I leave the room, or lay her on the floor to play without her being able to see me. The best way to see her go from happy to mad in 2.2 seconds is to just observe her with Sawyer. You can see in the picture that she loves her sister, and often breaks out into a huge grin whenever she sees her, but Sawyer also makes her mad and she lets us know. Sawyer insists on grabbing her hands and kissing them over and over which drives her nuts, and Sawyer steals every toy she plays with, again clearly not popular. Can't wait to see how these two face off when Isla can really stick up for herself.
As for the rest of us, we are enjoying finally having summer here in Chicago. The weather has been a little weird going from 95 to 65 in 24 hours, but today was beautiful and we ventured to a new park by our house. We were all digging the time outside. Sawyer is always better when we get her outside to run around and burn some energy - plus the girl has had some rough days lately. She has always been a fairly defiant kid (too smart for her own good and always with an opinion on everything) but she's taken it to new levels lately, not listening to a word we say or her daycare teachers. Miss Erica told me that she threw a chair the other day when they said no to her. While she told me that Sawyer's pal D'Angelo threw a chair earlier in the day and she thinks that's where she got it from, I couldn't help thinking - my god, my kid is going to end up in anger management classes before the age of 3. So we're trying to discipline more and stick to our guns. This has meant that Sawyer has been thrown in timeout, sent to her room, and put to bed early on several occasions. So far she is stubborn as hell and hasn't shown huge improvements, but we'll see how it works over time. One thing that has made it very interesting is that even though she's 2 1/2 Sawyer understands and uses sarcasm pretty heavily. I'm pretty sure she's just mirroring us so I'll blame myself for that one, but when we ask her to do stuff and she responds with some smart remark it's often SO hard not to laugh.
With that I'm off to bed. Fingers crossed I don't get woken up till 6 or so....
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