.5 years old!

Cami just hit the half way mark to her first birtday. She turned 6 months old on St. Patty's Day. She is still growing and gaining weight nicely. At her 6-month check up, she was 18.5 lbs, which puts her in the 90th pecentile for girls her age. For length, she is 26"long, which is about the 50th percentile. She is getting stronger and stronger all the time. With just a little help, she can keep her legs locked and support her own weight. She is starting to roll over more frequently and can push her whole torso up. While she still tumbles over quite a bit, she is also getting much better at sitting on her own. She is not nearly as sturdy as Mady was at this age, but she is getting there.

Cami now has two little teeth on the bottom. We also started her on solid food last week. She is getting a little rice cereal twice a day. She is a better eater than Mady was, but we sometimes still have to make her laugh or smile so she will open her mouth for the spoon. Daddy has much more success getting solid food in her than Mommy does. I had forgotten about all of the silly noises and expressions that go in to feeding a baby. We've also tried giving her some smashed banana, which she prefers over rice

cereal. Can't really blame her for that.

Sweet Dreams...

Ah, the most common topic of conversation for parents of
baby. Cami is finally in a sleep routine (more or less). During
the day, she will take three naps, at 9 am, 12 pm, and 4 pm. This is typical
for her age. At five months of age, we have started putting Cami in her crib to sleep, which was an easy transition to make.

Cami is a much different sleeper than Mady was at this age. Both girls
went to sleep about the same time each night (at five months of age), this
being between 7:30 and 8:00 pm at night. However, Mady stayed asleep for five or six hours straight and then awoke at 1:00 am and every two hours after that.
On the other hand, at five months, Cami was waking frequently after she went to bed and then finally stayed asleep around 10 or 11 pm. She usually only woke one time after that, around 2 or 3 in the morning. I will nurse her when she wakes up
and she will usually go back to sleep for the rest of the night. It’s so funny
how their sleep schedules could be so differently. However, as all parents
know, nothing stays the same for long. Since turning six months old, she has gotten much better about staying asleep when we first put her down. Generally, she only wakes once to eat during the night.

Cameron has not been the pacifier junky that Mady once was.
In fact, she has shown very little interest in using one. I have been hoping
that she would take to the pacifier so that it would serve as a good substitute
for me as her soothing device. It took several weeks (and three different
styles of pacifiers) before Cameron would even suck on a pacifier, but she
finally will accept one of them, only when she is really tired (like in the
evenings, when she is trying to go to sleep at night.) Even though she will
only use the pacifier sparingly, it does provide a little relief for me so that
I don’t have to nurse her to sleep…of course, some days, she still wants
nothing to do with the pacifier. Sigh…

Toofs and More!

We have had some exciting developments in the last few weeks. Cami's first tooth starting poking through at the beginning of March. She is also starting to sit on her own now. Of course, we still like to stay close by because she still tips over pretty easily. Most exciting of all, she slept through the night for four nights in a row last week! Unfortunately, she hasn't repeated that trick again, but we know she can do it now! She still struggles going to sleep on her own, but once she is down she tends to sleep pretty well. Even on bad nights, she is usually only up once or twice.

A bad development in March has been a persistent diaper rash. Carrie reacted to this the same way she reacts whenever she gets stressed about something: she started researching. We're pretty confident that the rash was caused by yeast, so we have been doing some pretty thourough cleaning of clothes, diapers, wipes, and everythign else that comes into contact with Cami's tush. We also started applying an anti-fungal ointment that seems to be helping. Hopefully this will all be behind us soon enough.

Last weekened, we visited some college friends of ours who are now living in Berea, which we pass through on our way to church every Sunday. We hadn't seen them in eight years, and they also have two little girls, each just a few months older than ours. It was fun to get caught up and spend the afternoon with them. The weekend before that, we visited uncle Stevie for this birthday celebration. All of his friends with young children came with brood in tow. There were significantly more kids at Steven's 29th birthday party than there were at Madelyn's third birthday party. Go figure. The final bit of exciting news is that Grandma and Grandpa Beyer found a house to rent in Richmond Heights this week. We'll (I'll) be helping them get moved in this weekend.