Little Marbles at 6 Months

Little Marbles’ personality has really been emerging this month. Both Papa Marbles and I have noticed that it feels easier to take care of her these days (as opposed to when she was a newborn) since we have a lot more activities we can do together as a family. We’ve been able to take her out for longer outings. She’s eating a lot more solid food and drinking less formula. She LOVES to play and is easily entertained. I love doing anything to get her to chuckle. I am in awe that she is growing so quickly. I still look back at photos from when she was just born and can’t believe she was ever that small!

Little Marbles loves…

Crawling (only backwards) – Little Marbles has mastered crawling… backwards! She can do a full 360 on the mat by pivoting her legs and she can go backward, but she is having trouble lifting up her bum and figuring out how to go forward. We try to entice by putting toys out of reach to see if she’ll move toward them, but she usually does a swimming motion and doesn’t really get to lunging forward. We think she’s going to get there really soon though!

ADVERTISEMENT

Tasting and Licking – Little Marbles has been trying very hard to explore everything with her mouth. Every time she has something new, she attempts to put it in her mouth. Any time there is anything near her chin (this is probably because she’s use to getting food all over her face and licking at the corners of her mouth) she sticks her tongue out to try and lap it up. This has happened with clothing very often, leading to soaking wet vests and t-shirts!

FOOD! – Little Marbles has taken very well to solids and hasn’t been very picky about what she eats. So far her favorite food of all time is sweet potato. We feed her solids three times a day starting with rice cereal mixed with formula in the morning, then pureed fruit or vegetables for lunch and dinner. We love love love the Beaba and have been using it religiously. My mom, who takes care of Little Marbles 3x/week prefers to make congee and then blend it in her Vitamix.

Figuring Out How Things Work – Little Marbles loves musical toys and you can often find her lifting up her toys to figure out where the sound is coming from. It’s amazing to watch her learn and manipulate her toys.

Electronics – Blinking lights… buttons on remote controls… Little Marbles loves electronic devices, most notably our Blackberries and the DVD player. She can spot our phones from a great distance and will reach for them. She loves pushing the buttons and getting the phone to light up. We’ve tried to entice her with toy phones, but she wants the real deal!

Silly Faces – Little Marbles still goes nuts when we make silly faces at her, which is probably why Papa Marbles is her favorite person in the entire world, with her Grandpa as a close second. It’s strange to us that she knows that we’re playing with her and that she can read our “fun” faces so well.

Music and Instruments – Little Marbles has been in a weekly music class since September and it is so great to watch her grow from week to week. She is starting to vocalize a lot more and tends to get very excited in class. She loves it! She is always aware of who is singing, and starts to bounce up and down to her favorite songs. We may have a young Amadeus on our hands. I would love it if Little Marbles takes up a musical instrument in the future. I definitely won’t be a Tiger Mother about it, but I hope she plays piano!

Little Marbles dislikes…

Sleep Training – We attempted to sleep train using the Ferber method and although Little Marbles slept for a few hours each night, it was fitful for her and heartwrenching for us. We had never seen Little Marbles get so upset– to the point of soaking her sheets with tears and streams of snot coming out of her nose. She would wail and wail. We have decided that she just does not like to be alone in her room in her crib. We moved the crib back to our room and she slept there for a night or two, but started crying again so we put her back in our bed and she’s been sleeping soundly every night save for a small feeding in the middle of the night. It’s been a very hard decision. We don’t want to coddle her, but we also want to go at a pace that’s best for Little Marbles’ development. We’ll take the small victories– she doesn’t need to be rocked or bounced to fall asleep anymore. She falls asleep on her own after rolling around a bit. But she is very attached to us and even reaches out and feels for us while she is asleep! We are going to work on re-establishing new goals for getting Little Marbles out of our bed, but for now, she will co-sleep with us.

Little Marbles grows…

Exercise – Little Marbles loves her walker. Despite our pediatrician’s apprehension about walkers, we felt that it wouldn’t harm her or prevent her from learning to walk. Little Marbles is super curious about everything and loves to scoot around in her walker to check stuff out. She’s pretty fast! We’ve purchased a set of baby gates and started baby proofing outlets to give her ample space to “run” around.

Teeth – Officially, Little Marbles does not have any teeth yet, which is strange because she seemed to have had a canine tooth bud peeking out of her gum a few weeks ago… now it’s mysteriously gone. We plan on asking the pediatrician about this next time, but as of right now, she has zero teeth!

I can’t believe another month has passed. Soon it’ll be Little Marbles’ first Christmas ::gasp!::