Six Months

Guess who turned six months old yesterday?  That's right--this girl:

We sure do love her!

And this is how you will usually find her these days, feet to mouth.  She starts every day with socks on, but they usually only last a matter of minutes before she's got them off and is sucking on those cute little toes.

Six months is kind of a big milestone.  I feel like the first six months are the hardest, and then it gets fun after that!  In fact, I have repeatedly said that I would be happy to have more kids if I could get them when they are six months old and raise them from there.  I have a friend who told me she makes herself a cake to celebrate her children's six month birthdays, as a congratulations to herself for making it there!  Yesterday I followed suit and we enjoyed birthday cake last night.  Thanks for the great idea, Beth!  :-)
What can I say about Annie at this age?  She is an absolute delight.  She is an incredibly happy, mellow, good-natured baby.  She rarely cries, unless she is tired.  She ADORES her big brothers, and thinks McKay is especially hilarious.  He can get her to laugh harder than anyone else.  She is at her happiest when he is around, and is completely oblivious to the danger that she is in every time he is in her vicinity!  ;-)
The bad news with Annie is that it seems as though she is always teething, but never getting teeth.  She has been working on her front bottom two for, no kidding, like 2 1/2 months.  We have actually seen white twice now, but somehow the teeth always recede back into the gums.  We never had that problem with the boys, at least not that I can remember.
In conjunction with that, her night sleep has not been so good.  She has been getting up at least twice every night for probably the last six weeks.  We have been pretty tolerant because of the teething, but I think I have had about enough!  Sleep training here we come!  But I have to say, as bad as her sleep patterns have been lately, I am grateful that the teething hasn't seemed to bother her during the daytime. She is as pleasant as ever!
I have recently started Annie on solids.  She seemed to like rice cereal well enough, but then she started throwing it up in the night whenever we gave it to her.  So we backed off, took a break from solids for a bit, and then started again last week with some new stuff.  I am making my own baby food this time around, and so far she has tried pears and avocados.  She is certainly not a voracious eater, but she is tolerant.

While I'm at it, I  guess I'll post a couple pictures of Annie around five months, since that has never happened yet.

Annie seems a lot smaller than my boys were at six months.  Part of that is that she actually is, physically, a lot littler than they were.  But developmentally, she is just a little slower, too.  The boys had way more hair and at least two teeth each by this age.  They were sleeping a good solid 12 hours at night; Annie's best so far is 9, and it's only happened a few times.  They were rolling like barrels, using rolling as a mode of transportation to get where they wanted to be.  Annie can roll over, but again, has only done it a handful of times.  I'm not necessarily concerned about her development; I honestly think it's more personality than anything.  She is just more content and less busy than they were.  And believe me, that's not a bad thing!  I can leave her on the floor on a blanket for an hour or more if I need to!  It's just interesting to see how babies, even siblings, can be so different!