6 months! (Marathon post!)

My sweet Emma turned 6 months old yesterday. I can hardly believe it! It's been such a whirlwind. I can't believe how much she has changed. And I absolutely can't imagine live without her! I love our live right now. She's at such a great stage. I'll be the first to admit that the first couple of months were very hard. Trying to recover while attempting breastfeeding and never sleeping more than a couple hours at a time was exhausting. Actually I don't think exhausting even begins to describe it. Transitions often are difficult. But now I feel like we've made it through to the other side. Every stage gets more fun. I love seeing her little personality and how she's developing.

One of my favorite times of day is still morning. She's so happy in the mornings. She always gets a big grin on her face when I go get her. She typically starts to stir around 6am. She still seems sleepy so I bring her into bed with me and we sleep for a couple hours. I love my cuddle time with Emma. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

We're also starting to have a night time routine, which I love too. We brush her two teeth, then read Goodnight Moon (she tries to help by turning the pages but after a couple of pages she just wants to chew on the book). She plays with her favorite blankie and her musical seahorse while I give her a bottle too.

As of the past couple of weeks, she's been sitting unassisted. Sometimes she'll fall over, but usually she can sit for a couple of minutes without any trouble. She has figured out how to use her arms to stay balanced. She's still extremely strong and can support her weight standing. She still needs help from us to balance.

She's been trying to crawl for a couple of weeks. I think she's doing a great job. She can scoot around the apartment, mainly going backwards. She's still trying to figure out how to go forward. As of the last week, she's figured out how to get on her knees and rock back and forth. As of the past few days, she can go from her hand and knees to a sitting position very easily. When she does try to go forward, she usually does this Pilates pose. Or maybe I should say skydiving pose. I'm not sure where she came up with this. It looks like she's trying to fly. She puts her arms out and points her toes. Ha! Love it!

She has tried a lot of foods. Rice cereal, pears, apples, bananas, strawberries (still a favorite, I think), blackberries, blueberries, sweet potatoes, avocado, carrots. I've made some of her food buy using a mini food processor. It's quite handy. It's actually affordable to puree organic fruit. We just stick the extras in the freezer. We've also used a number of the pre-packaged organic baby food. It's super convenient, but you definitely pay for the convenience.

As of the past week or so I am no longer nursing Emma. It's been a struggle the last 6 months so I can't say that I miss it. I miss the idea of what I thought it would be. It was an emotional issue from the beginning and it was something that I really wanted to do. It became increasingly difficult to nurse her, my supply had gone down (heck, my supply was never good), and the final straw was Emma getting teeth. I've been told that babies don't bite when they're nursing or if they do, they'll only do it once since they would prefer getting milk. Well let's just say that Emma is a distracted eater and even bites the nipples on her bottles on occasion. She doesn't always do this but my guess is that she wants to chew on things since she's teething and her gums hurt.

I'm still pumping three times a day. I've gone back and forth about when to stop pumping. It's a hassle. It just means that I have to clean more bottle parts and pump pieces when I'd rather give my attention and energy to Emma. And I swear that Emma has a sixth sense. As soon as I start pumping, she'll wake up from naps or she'll start crying or she'll just want my attention. But I'm attached to a pump, so there's not much I can do, unless I stop. Steve has felt more strongly than I have about continuing to pump since the breast milk is so good for her. I am finally agreeing with him now that Steve and I got bad colds and Emma ended up doing just fine. We thought she was starting to get sick but she never got nearly as sick as we did. I'm not sure if it's completely related to the antibodies in breast milk but we'd like to think so. Emma's pediatrician also encouraged me to continue pumping. So I'll trudge along so that I can give Emma 4-6ounces of breast milk per day.

We're still having difficulty with Emma in her crib. She likes her crib just fine, but she has been hitting her head against the rails when she's turning over and when she tries to crawl. She also gets her legs stuck in between the rails. Her new pediatrician surprisingly gave us the A-okay to go ahead and put bumpers in her crib. I'm still super paranoid about SIDS and I know the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation is to avoid bumpers. So we'll see how long we keep the bumpers in for. Tonight is the first night that we're trying it out. We follow all the other rules to avoid SIDS and she's out of the peak window of when babies die from SIDS.  But we still check to make sure she's breathing very frequently when she sleeps. I wonder when we'll stop doing that.

Emma seems to prefer our bed over her crib. It's significantly softer, which makes it more dangerous for her if she turns on her belly. Typically she sleeps on her back or side in our bed. She does like to sleep on her belly too though. Unfortunately, it's too dangerous for her to sleep in our bed without one of us there to prevent her from rolling off. Oh the joys of still having a full sized bed.

Emma enjoyed her first trip to Sandestin back in June. She loved splashing in the pool. The beach was a bit trickier since she kept putting her hands in her mouth, along with lots of sand. Check out some of the photos from the trip here.

Steve started his intern year down at the Med. We really miss having him around the apartment. It was a treat in May and June when he wasn't working. It was a rough first week since the hours were long and he got pretty sick. His team also got stuck working the holiday too. Bad luck for them. I ended up getting the same cold that he had. This what my first time being sick while caring for Emma. Thank goodness she's sleeping mostly through the night. It was still harder than the old days when I could sleep off a bad cold. Really, I can't complain though since I was able to stay around the house.

I'm LOVING getting to mostly stay home with Emma. It's amazing that I'm still able to work part time so we have enough money. I feel so grateful that my employer has let me work from a distance. I feel like the good Lord was looking out for us to make everything align the way it did. Working part time seems to be the best of both worlds. I hope and pray that everything works out so well when we move to NC next year.

We still miss a lot of things about Atlanta, mainly the food. But it's worth it being in Memphis so we can be near family and friends this year, although Memphis does scare me at times. For example, I was driving on Germantown Parkway last week (in front of the BMW dealership), and there were two girls fighting on the side of the road. Actually they weren't on the side of the road- they threw each other out in front of traffic, completely stopping traffic. It was nuts. I have never seen anything like it. It actually scared me a little bit. How I wish it were illegal to have guns. I was thinking- if these people had guns, there would have been bullets flying. Thankfully, two cop cars raced over and arrested them. It was disturbing though. I guess I have the Matthews genes of being mostly non-confrontational. I can't imagine every physically fighting anybody. Heck, Steve and I rarely even have disagreements. I don't think either one of us like the negativity.

To see photos, check out Picasa! I'm having trouble uploading video clips now. I'll try it again later.