Six Months

Claire turned 6 months Saturday. Here's her stats:

Weight: 14 lb. 11.5 oz (24%)

Height: 26 inches (67%)

Head 16.34 (23%)

She continues to be on a perfect growth curve- that's what we like to see!

As you can see from the picture above (ignore the laundry in the background), she is still as happy as can be...mostly. She is turing into quite the mommy's girl, which is good and bad. If she sees me leave the room, she immediately starts crying until I come back in. I have to put her in the bouncy chair in the kitchen while I cook. She also likes to be held. A lot. It's nice to be loved, but it may not be so nice when it's time to put her in nursery at church.

She gets up on all fours and pushes herself all around the room, but she isn't crawling quite yet (we are happy about that). Yesterday for about 20 minutes Audra "followed" her around the room- while Claire pushed herself backwards- with a book she was reading to Claire. It was incredibly cute!

Sleep. Hmm. About 4 nights ago I said to Ben, "I know we can not be the only parents in the world who have babies that sleep horribly." It seems that everybody always wants to brag about how great their babies sleep. I'm not buying it. Maybe they sleep great for one week, maybe parents think waking up twice a night is sleeping great. I don't know, but I know that Audra and Claire cannot possibly be the only babies to ever live to have sleep problems. So I am glad that some of you have been willing to talk about sleep problems on your blogs- that makes me feel better, even though I really am sorry that you have to go through the struggles you have to go through.

Anyway, back to Claire. Being in Seattle screwed her up (and she and I are flying back this weekend for my brother's wedding, so it will get screwed up again. Such is life, I guess). She only takes 2 20-45 minute naps a day. That's it! That seems crazy to me. So we started to put her to bed earlier- assured by Dr. Weissbluth that she would still sleep as long in the morning, she would just get more sleep at the beginning. WRONG! We put her to bed 45 minutes earlier, she woke up exactly 45 minutes earlier. After 3 days of this, we went back to her normal bedtime (7-ish) because waking up at 6:15 for the day was unacceptable.

Right now she for sure wakes up once a night to feed. That's fine. Every once in awhile, that is the only time she wakes up. Most nights though, something else will wake her up: she pees on her clothes, she breaks through her swaddle, she rolls onto her stomach (even with pillows made to keep her from rolling over), or she just wants her pacifier popped back in. So, most nights I am up with her twice, but sometimes it can be 3 or even 4. Thankfully Ben lets me sleep in on the weekends, but it can be rough. Honestly, it is HIGHLY possible we are done having children all because of the sleep issue. We do not work well with no sleep for months on end. I used to think I wanted 5 children- that's what my mom had. I thought, "if my mom could do it, I can do it." WRONG! She is a saint and a warrier- I am neither. I am tired.

One person who doesn't care if Claire wakes up in the middle of the night? Audra. She is still Claire's #1 fan:

Claire looks a little possessed there, but it was really cute- Audra put the ring in her mouth, and then wanted Claire to put it in hers. I love watching the two of them together! They are so fun!