6 months

I can't believe we've passed the six month mark already. My little baby already seems so grown up, and I find myself thinking of how nice it would be to have another. Unfortunately one of my bloggy friends who has the same number of frozen embryos stored with our RE as we do was told this week that she only has a 15-25% chance of a double transfer getting her a BFP. I assume our chances are about the same. That's pretty disappointing, when we were both given something like a 70-80% chance of a fresh cycle working.

Both DH and I are back at work and K is now looked after by her nanny during the week. We decided on a nanny rather than daycare because of the flexibility our jobs require. DH travels 1-2 times a month for business, and works something like 9am-6:30pm most days. He works from home and has somewhat flexible hours, in that he can schedule a couple hours off during the day if he wants to. I work in a hospital operating room, and HAVE to be there from at least 7:50am to 3:30pm most days, and relatively often have to stay till more like 4-5pm. The commute takes me 30min, so I have to leave here at 7:20am each day, and don't get home till somewhere between 4-5:30pm most days. I also have to work some nights and some weekends on call. Since the city-run daycares all basically have hours from 7:30am on, I would never be able to get K there in the mornings if DH was away on business. Our nanny has agreed to come in for 7:15am on the days when DH is out of town, so that will let me get to work on time. Some home day cares have slightly longer hours and would open at 7am, but in the end I didn't really know where to start to look for a good one. The other reasons we decided on a nanny were that K will be less exposed to illness in her first couple years of life, and so that life can go according to her schedule. If she's still sleeping at 7am, I don't have to get her up to drag her to daycare. If she has a bad night and is tired at 8:30am, she can nap rather than having to wait until it's naptime for all the kids. As a bonus, our nanny is also doing housekeeping for us while K's sleeping or we have her before or after work. The place hasn't been this clean since we moved in!

K really seems to like the nanny we picked out for her. In fact, Tita (auntie in Filipino) has already started doing more fun stuff with her than either of us did. She's trying to teach her to high-five, takes leisurely strolls to look at flowers and enjoy the nice weather outside, takes her to swing in the park and hang out watching other kids play, and even took her to a music class at the library. All that in one week. We've been impressed. DH was here for the first 3 days, but really only showed her the routine on the first day. Since then she's been pretty much independent, with DH around if she's got any questions.

So far the only downside is that K doesn't smell like herself any more at the end of the day, but rather smells like our nanny. It's not unpleasant, just different. We've decided to ask if she'll give her a bath every other day before she goes home, so that we'll have our sweet baby smell back most evenings.

What's K doing these days? She's sitting up really well now, and only falls over occasionally. She did fall over while reaching for a toy last night and bashed her forehead on her Laugh 'n Learn table - apparently she's fairly tough, because although she looked surprised, she didn't cry. She quickly picked up on how to use a bunch of different levers and buttons on the toy to make it play music and flash lights at her. I was impressed with how fast she caught on. She's got very good fine motor skills, and can pick up small objects with great delicacy and easily pass them from hand to hand.

K's also eating like a champ. At 6 months, she now weighs 15lb and measures just over 26.5" long. She has two bottles of milk after getting up (about 130-140mL each), then has cereal mixed with fruit (about 2tbsp of each) for lunch with an 80mL bottle of milk to wash it down. Late in the afternoon she has another 140mL bottle of milk, and before bed has some veggies or fruit with 80mL of milk. She really loves her solid foods these days. Even prunes go down pretty well. She screeches up a storm if you don't start feeding her immediately after you put her in her high chair, and has now taken to pounding the tray with a hand while making lots of impatient noises as you feed her. I'm still pumping like mad to produce enough breast milk to keep up with her. Her intake is only around 20oz a day, which I've been able to cover with my pumping. Now that we've passed the 6 month mark, we're going to try a taste of formula this weekend to see if she'll still take it, and if that's a yes, I'm going to cut back on how often I pump, even if that tapers off my production. My nipples have been crying out for a break for a long time, and I'm just getting really tired of getting up twice a night to go pump. I'm exhausted.

K's eczema doesn't seem to have gotten any worse at this point. It's still there behind her knees, and a tiny bit at her elbows, but I'm hoping that the cooler weather will help it to go away. She's got her first tiny scar on her cheek under her right eye where she gouged out a chunk of skin one day. We let the scab just fall off, but she's got a little red mark where it used to be that hasn't started to fade even though it's been a few weeks already. Boo.

She still loves to suck her middle and ring fingers on her right hand, but has also started to like her left thumb as well. We're hoping she's not going to continue sucking them for years, or she might risk orthodontic issues.

She sleeps about 11-12 hours each night, and has about 4 45min naps a day. I'm looking forward to the day when she consolidates those into 2-3 longer naps a day, so that it will be easier to plan outings.

K doesn't seem to be interested in crawling yet, and gets frustrated very quickly with tummy time. She's also not as good at standing up any more, now that she's gotten heavier. I guess we have a little time left before we'll have to start thinking about babyproofing the house.

I'm just so grateful to have my beautiful little girl.