As of last Friday, Payton is officially half a year old! It is hard to believe. The time has flown by and she has been growing up so quickly. This past weekend I was like, “Who are you and what have you done with my baby?” because she was smiling all the time, babbling, squealing, sitting up playing, standing with just me holding her hands, and she ate “solid” food for the first time. It’s incredible how much they develop in just 6 months!
The month started out with Payton discovering that she enjoyed playing in her Exersaucer. Now she spends time playing in it each day. She bounces around and loves to bang her rattle against the Exersaucer.
The last weekend in March my parents came to visit. When Payton’s LaLa tried to hold her for the first time she cried for a few minutes but then quickly got used to being around her grandparents. On Friday, Payton got to go to Shrimp N Stuff for the first time and did real well. She sat on the table while we waited for our food and then played with her toys in her car seat while we ate. On Saturday, Charles and my dad worked all day long installing vinyl siding under the house (because Haven was breaking through the old wood siding) and then installing cabinets in our laundry room (which was what I asked for as my birthday present). They worked really hard and both projects look great! While the guys worked, my mom and I enjoyed spending time playing with Payton. We also went to Katie’s Seafood and got fresh shrimp for dinner.
The last week of March a dark freckle appeared on Payton’s left leg. She now also has about 3 lightly colored freckles on her face. It appears that she is taking after me with the light skin and freckles. Her eyes are still very blue so she may also have my eyes. My eyes are a bluish-green color.
Payton had been making it through the night without needing to be nursed, but starting the third week of March, she started waking up again around 3 a.m. wanting to be fed. Now that we have started her on solids, I am hoping she will start getting enough calories during the day that she won’t feel she needs to eat in the middle of the night anymore.
She also has times when she wakes up during the night and all that is required to get her back to sleep is to just stick her pacifier back into her mouth. One night Charles heard her fussing and went into her room to do just that. He was feeling around in her crib in the semi-darkness for the pacifier but couldn’t seem to find it. Then Payton, who had the pacifier in her hand the entire time, held it up for him as if to say, “You lookin’ for this?” He said he laughed despite it being the middle of the night.
Two weeks before turning 6 months old, Payton learned to sit up on her own. On Saturday, April 2, 2011, Payton sat up on our bed for minutes at a time before falling over. This was perfect timing because the following day we took her to take pictures in the bluebonnets in League City. She sat up on her own in the bluebonnets and even smiled a couple of times so we ended up with some cute pictures of her!
This has nothing to do with Payton but the following day, while Payton was asleep in bed for the night, we watched on T.V. as the Aggie women’s basketball team won the national championship in the NCAA tournament. Pretty exciting! I can’t even begin to imagine how a football national championship would feel. I hope it happens in my lifetime, but maybe hoping it will happen in Payton’s lifetime is more reasonable! Haha
On Tuesday, April 5, Payton had her first taste of solid foods. We were having dinner and I had just read that avocado can be a good first food for babies. So I took a piece out of my salad, mashed it up real good, and used my finger to feed her a small amount. She made the worst face and spit it all right back out!
Payton refuses to nurse when she first wakes up in the morning. I basically have to give her about 30-45 minutes to play before she will even consider eating. I guess she’s like her Daddy, not much of a morning person. The second weekend in April, Charles was participating in the Lone Star Triathlon here in Galveston. The triathlon started at 7 a.m. so my plan was to go there just as soon as Payton woke up. She woke up, I tried to feed her, she refused so we left for the triathlon. We got there and were in time to see Charles bike and run. By then Payton was starting to get hungry so I found a bench off by itself and tried to nurse her under a cover. Well she really started screaming at that point. I took her home and she continued to scream and refused to nurse for about 20 minutes before she calmed down enough to eat. I guess I’m telling this story because it’s been so long since Payton has really cried like that. I’m not sure she’s ever actually been overly hungry and she just didn’t know how to react to it. She is such a good baby that when she does cry like this I feel so bad because I’m not used to it.
That afternoon Payton attended her first crawfish boil. You’re not a true “Falgout” if you aren’t eating crawfish before the age of 1! Just kidding, she didn’t eat any crawfish but she did have fun visiting for a few minutes before she decided it was getting a little too close to her bedtime.
The Sunday before Payton turned 6 months old, she learned to jump in her Jenny Jump Up. We’d been putting her in it since she was about 3 months old but she’s always just hung around or used it as a teether. But I noticed she’d been starting to really jump around in her Exercauser so we decided to give it a try. She jumped and jumped, but never smiled so it was a bit hard to tell how much she as enjoying it. I think at the time she was just very focused on jumping because now she jumps and occasionally stops to give us a smile. Watching her jump around in her Jenny Jump Up is the absolute cutest thing!
Payton’s 6 month doctors appointment was Friday, April 15, 2011. Her appointment was scheduled for 9:00 a.m. which is generally around the time that she goes down for her morning nap so I was pretty concerned she would get overly tired during the appointment. Well, unlike her 4 month appointment, she remained in a good mood throughout this appointment. One concern we had was that she hasn’t been babbling, smiling, and laughing very often, but I guess she wanted to prove me wrong because she babbled and smiled throughout the appointment.
Payton weighed 18 pounds (86th percentile), her height was 27.5 inches (98th percentile), and head circumference of 44 cm (88th percentile). The doctor said the numbers all look really good. Her doctor said you want all the percentiles to be close to each other because that means she is proportional. And they are right on track with how she has been measuring. I did ask if being above average right now has any relation to how big she will be as an adult and she told me that it does not. That generally you can’t get any idea how big a child will turn out until they are at least two years old (and even then it’s not very accurate.)
Payton met the majority of her 6 month milestones. She scored nearly perfect on the problem solving/ cognitive milestones. Her Daddy thinks this means she’s good at math, but for a 6 month old this means if she drops an object she will pick it back up, she shows an interest in things and tries to get objects that are out of reach, she can pass an object from one hand to another, etc. She also scored average to high on her physical movement and social milestones. The only milestone she scored a little low on was her verbal milestone. Right now she’s just a quiet baby. The doctor had some concern that maybe if she was having trouble hearing it could be affecting her verbal skills. Then when she looked in her ears and saw a lot of wax she thought maybe that could be the issue. She tried to clean Payton’s ears out but Payton kept moving her head around so she wasn’t able to get much wax removed. So for the next several weeks we are supposed to massage Payton’s ears under clean bath water to try to loosen up some of that wax. Honestly though, I can guarantee Payton is not having hearing problems. You can’t tip toe into that baby’s room without waking her up! The doctor also said that her personality right now may just be that she is “quietly content” and I would completely agree with that.
At the doctor we got the “okay” to start Payton on solid foods. I’m pretty proud that I was able to exclusively breastfeed her for the first six months. I know for many different reasons not everyone is able to breastfeed so I just feel really fortunate that it has come so easy for Payton and I. Although I’m excited about starting her on solids, I also treasure our time together as I continue to nurse her.
The day after Payton turned 6 months old, we fed her rice cereal for the first time. It was actually more like rice cereal soup, as it was mostly breast milk with a little rice cereal in it. My parents were in town visiting so she had an entire audience for her first solid food. Payton made faces and her body would jerk like she was shocked that something was in her mouth, but at the same time she made a “Mmmmmm…..” sound as if she was enjoying it. It was pretty funny! That morning I’m not sure she swallowed much of the cereal at all, but by the afternoon she was helping us put the spoon in her mouth and was definitely eating some of the food. We also tried to give her water out of a sippy cup, but she enjoyed teething on the rubber top more than drinking the water.
This week Payton has gotten even better at eating the rice cereal. She likes to eat quickly and continues to help bring the spoon to her mouth. She also has learned to drink water from the sippy cup and seems to really enjoy it. Earlier in the week I tried to make her some homemade brown rice cereal, but I don’t think I cooked it long enough so it turned out a little too chunky. Next week I will try again since I would like to make a lot of her food for her, but for now we’re feeding her organic brown rice cereal from a box. Next week I also plan on starting her on a homemade vegetable puree (maybe squash).
Payton enjoyed having her LaLa and Grandpa (my parents) here for the weekend. She started a new smile where she scrunches up her nose and smiles. She was especially into smiling this way when spending time with her LaLa. She had fun showing off all her new skills to her grandparents and also going out to eat to Shrimp N Stuff and Benno’s (Cajun seafood).
This week she has learned two new skills. First, she has learned to roll from her back to her tummy. It has happened twice this week. I’m not sure she intends for it to happen since she doesn’t like lying on her tummy to begin with, but she’ll be playing with a toy and kind of rolling around and then just end up on her tummy. She very quickly rolls herself back over to her back. The other new thing this week is that she’s learned she can open and close her mouth at will. So she has been doing it constantly! When smiling, when playing, when fussy…. she opens and closes her mouth. It’s funny how when they learn something new they just want to keep doing it over and over.
That’s all for now. Hope everyone has a wonderful and blessed Easter! Don’t forget the real reason for the holiday. It’s not about the Easter bunny, the candy, and all that…. It’s about God sending His only son to die for our sins and then being raised again. Having a daughter I can NOT even begin to imagine (nor do I want to imagine) what that would be like. How lucky are we to have a God that loves us that much! Happy Easter!
