The Biagini Family: Natalie: 1/2 of a year old already!

Happy half birthday to our beautiful, smiley little girl. Life is so much sweeter with her in it.

The shubbers has continued her streak as being the happiest and possibly easiest baby, and she is has made our holidays extra special with all of her new firsts. She still has her cheery, easygoing personality, and her belly laugh is contagious. She kicks her legs with excitement when she knows you're coming to get her out of her bed or when it's time to eat. She loves to be called a big girl, and she rarely is found without a smile on her face.

The highlights of her sixth month of age include sitting up all by herself, getting on more of a consistent eating/sleeping daytime schedule, starting solid foods, and getting her first two teeth!

Schedule: Her nighttime sleeping has been great from the start, and she still mostly gets up just once in the middle of the night for a quick snack. Fortunately, she still falls asleep quickly, so I really can't say that I'm overtired from any of that. (Truthfully, it's the walk up the stairs while I'm half asleep that is the most annoying part! How lazy does that sound?!) I partly look forward to holding her and feeding her while the rest of the household is asleep, because she takes solely bottles during the daytime now. It's our quiet little one on one time that I realize won't last forever. I have been holding her a few extra minutes at night after she's fallen back asleep to make up for our missed cuddle time. I have jokingly referred to all of this as the boob wars, since she will fuss when I try to feed her, but then she will immediately gulp down an entire bottle. She has won, as I just resort to pumping now without even trying to feed her myself during daytime hours.

Regarding her daytime schedule, she gets up between 7 and 8 with a smile on her face and legs kicking away. She hangs out with me in the morning while I do my work at the computer, and David takes Nico to school. I usually leave within a few minutes of David returning, and she has a couple hours to hang out with daddy until her morning nap around 10-10:30. Shortly after waking, it's Nico pick up time at 12:30, and another nap is around 2. She naps solely in her bed now, and the pack n play has been retired.

I usually enter the scene while both kids are sleeping, and David has juuuuust started playing a quick video game for his guilty pleasure of the day. I try not to give him tooooo much grief and point out how easy his job is looking, ha! Both kids wake up around 4, and it's playtime until our 5:30-6 dinnertime. Natalie's bedtime has been a little inconsistent when her teeth were coming in, and she would fight sleep, delaying bedtime from the usual 7-7:30 time, all the way to 8 or 9.

This girl is on the move. She spends most of her waking hours rolling around on the floor. She has perfected her rolling and is getting faster at moving across a room when she wants to while grabbing various toys along the way! She rarely uses the swing any longer, and we are actually about to box it up. It's bittersweet getting rid of all of these big items that we won't ever use again. She really doesn't use the blue rocker much either unless we are just needing a safe spot to put her for 5-10 min to get something done. She's moved onto the standing bouncer for maybe 20 min a day and stays entertained as she chews on all of the various attached toys and looks proud to be standing up.

Worn out after getting to the other side of the room...

Eating: Still going strong with milk. I made it to my initial goal of 6 months of exclusively breastfeeding, and I'm really proud of myself. I don't admit that often, but this definitely hasn't been an easy feat. I plan on keeping it going for a few more months and will stop sometime this spring. She takes three 7-8 oz bottles a day, plus the middle of the nighttime/early a.m. feeding. We stay on a pretty consistent schedule with her bottles, and she lets us know when she's ready. She also definitely lets you know when she doesn't want the milk and firmly swats the bottle away.

The most exciting recent highlight for me has been watching her start solid food, aka mushy baby food packages. It's fun to feed her. She looooves to eat and has grabbed the spoon to assist it into her mouth from the very beginning. We started with rice cereal about a week before she turned 6 mo, and the fruits and veggies followed shortly thereafter, followed by meats and also combined dinners with 3-4 different foods. At 6 and a half months now, she has gone through a handful of fruits like apples, pears, and bananas; veggies like peas, green peas, carrots, tomatoes; meats like turkey and chicken mixed with either rice or veggies; sweet potatoes, and mac & cheese! She has eaten most of them with such enthusiasm, and I'm going with the mac & cheese as her favorite based on those chunky legs kicking away the whole time while she devoured the package. She also recently started the teething biscuits called mum mums that come in different flavors and dissolve in her mouth. Nico used to love those too, and we used to call them surfboards. We often give her those for appetizers while we are eating our dinner, so that she has something to be entertained with until we have free hands to feed her.

Size: 9 and 12 month outfits and Size 2 diapers. She received a great report at her 6 month doctor's checkup and is sized at 16 lbs, 8 oz (59%) and 26 inches tall (55%). She's started filling out a little more since the start of new foods, and I love those chunky thighs and soft, full cheeks.

New things/milestones: It's getting fun now that she can sit up and play some! We still have to sit behind her or have a pillow back there, since she occasionally loses her balance backwards.

Her first 2 teeth came through (on the bottom, in the center) at the same time in the wee early morning hours of her half birthday! It was quite the surprise that quickly woke me up a little more. We have been using frozen and vibrating toys and teething tablets to help her when she gets fussy, and it's obvious that her mouth is bothering her.

She continues to babble away during the day and may have possibly said her first word this week. It's up for debate. As I was holding her, and David walked in the room, she turned her head to look at him and said DA DA as clear as day. It just seemed so intentional! Cool moment.

We just purchased a new high chair! It was giving me anxiety to have her sitting up on the table, and the pink seat's tray doesn't fit like I thought it would, so a high chair just made sense. It's so much safer to have a nice detachable tray over her lap. We have to keep a blanket behind her or she slouches down, since she may just be a little tiny for the seat still.

My favorite moments: Hands down, it's still watching her and Nico interact. Nico is such a sweetheart to her and can be found giving her hugs or trying to get her to laugh. She continues to stare at him with such adoration and turns her head to find him immediately if he hears his voice. (It's often a big distraction having him around when we are trying to get her to eat!) He calls her the sweetest names like pumpkin, sweetheart, pretty girl, etc and even asks me to give her a kiss for him if he leaves for school and she's not awake yet. He has enjoyed being a part of watching her grow as much as we have. My heart just bursts with love for these two.

It's funny, looking back, that I was once worried that these two wouldn't have a close bond because of the five year age gap. What a fool I was.

My other favorite moment is when she wraps her fingers around mine while she's eating. She's been doing that to whoever gives her a bottle, but she now will put one hand behind her head to wrap her fingers around mine as I'm supporting her head and nursing her. I wish I could bottle up moments like this. She's such a sweet girl.

Picture time.