Keddiebears: Sophia Watch: Six Months

Half a year already!! Our happy wee girly is six months old now, and continues to be such a sweet-tempered, curious little one. It's generally really easy to get smiles out of her, just by grinning right in her face and maybe making a few funny noises. Which makes this photographer mama so very, very happy! :)

Sophia continues to smile, giggle, and full-out belly laugh throughout the day. David and I can get her to chuckle pretty regularly, but it's Joshua who elicits the great big laughs. Sophia so loves her big brother! She stares at him in fascination when he jumps up and down around her, and she's very patient about his sometimes less-than-gentle playing around her. I can't wait until she's old enough to interact with him more fully!

Still no signs of rolling over, and no interest in trying to crawl or anything like that. Which, to be honest, I'm very okay with -- remember how very mobile our little trouble-maker Joshua was at six months? :) If Sophia wants to wait a bit longer to become mobile, I'm cool with that! She is getting better at sitting up while propped by pillows, and she stands very well as long as you provide a bit of balance, so I'm not concerned about her muscle development. She's just a very contented little girl, and so far, she's perfectly satisfied with sitting and watching the world around her!

The one major milestone we reached this month was the introduction of solid foods! Just a few days before she turned six months, we offered her rice cereal for the first time. I learned my lesson with Joshua, and decided not to introduce too many new things all at once -- I kept Sophia on my lap rather than in a high chair, and kept the cereal consistency pretty watery. And the first feeding went like gangbusters! I think she thought the spoon was a fun new chew toy, and was pleasantly surprised to get some food with it as well. Three days later, we introduced sweet potatoes, and it was a revelation -- Sophia was clearly excited to discover that food could taste SO GOOD!! :) She gobbled down an entire Gerber container of the sweet potatoes, and she's continued to demolish the sweet potatoes each time I've offered them.

And with the introduction of solid foods, we've dropped the last dreamfeeding nursing session! I had been waking her up between 11-11:30pm to do the last feeding of the night, which generally took forever (since she was half-asleep and leisurely about nursing), and which meant that David and I weren't going to bed until after midnight. Now, I feed her a solid food meal at about 6pm, and then do a last nursing session at about 9pm, and we're done for the night! We're very, very excited about having these extra hours of sleep back. :)

And more photos of our sweet little girl at six months!