Growing like a weed! (Tessa's belated six month recap)

Six months

So Tessa is definitely suffering from Second-Child Disease. For those of you who aren't familiar with this affliction, it is the plight of the poor second child who doesn't get NEARLY the blog posts that her firstborn older brother had written in his honor. But this disease is really more of a illness of an over-worked and sleepy Mom who is doing all she can just to make it through each day...forget about blogging!

Anyhow, our sweet girl is already EIGHT MONTHS OLD!!!

She has really blossomed into a laid-back, quick-with-a-smile, extremely sweet baby who sleeps like a champ. Who would have dreamed that my little monster who refused to sleep for more than 2 hours at a time would miraculously tranform into a dream-child who goes to bed at 7 and sleeps for 11 to 12 straight hours. Amazing.

Tessa adores her big brother, and he likes to make her laugh. When we're in the car the two of them just giggle and giggle together. It reminds me of when Paul and I used to play our invented game "Happy/Sad" in the backseat of the car. I love it. They can't get enough of each other, and even when Max is being overly aggressive with his hugs and kisses, she seems to love it. Pop Pop claims that Tessa loves chaos. If that's true, she is living in the right family!

Tessa is also quite the eater. I started her on solids at six months and she was not a fan. She just really wouldn't open her mouth wide enough for me to even get anything in there. Then she went through a couple of weeks of incessant crying. She would cry from the moment she got up in the morning until she went to bed at night. Holding her sometimes helped, but sometimes not. One morning I had enough and I hauled her off to the doctor. He looked her over, took some blood, and determined....nothing. Strangely, though, she stopped doing that a few days later. I started feeding her regular foods around that time, starting with Cheerios. She ate them like a champ, nevermind that she has no teeth. Soon we moved on to other things...and now she eats pretty much anything. She'd probably find a way to wolf down a filet if I gave her some. It is rather tiring to eat with her, though. If she sees someone eating, she fusses until she gets some of what they're having. Then she eats it while saying "mmm, mmmm, mmmmm". Here she is yamming some banana bread:

 



So, here were her six month stats:

Height: 25 3/4" 50%

Weight: 15lb 11.5oz  48% (approx)

Head: 42.5 cm  60%

So I guess our girl is rather petite. She's probably going to be a shorty like her Mom. Lately I have been getting lots of comments about how small she is. Small is fine, as long as she doesn't spread outward! Perhaps I should not encourage the gorging!

She isn't crawling yet, and I wouldn't really say she has mastered sitting on her own. She can do it, but she also topples over quite frequently. She definitely is able to get around, though, with a combination of rolling and army crawling. And she keeps trying to get up on her knees, so I think it will be soon that she's off and away.

She's doing lots of babbling, and says "babababa" all day long. She also loves to blow bubbles and spit, which Max takes as license to run around spitting. She definitely tries to make you laugh, and if she succeeds she will continue doing whatever it was ad nauseum. Except it never gets old because she's so darn cute. I love that she has a sense of humor already.

Have I mentioned that she sleeps all night??? If that's not a perfect baby, I don't know what is!