6 month appt - stats

This morning was the Monkey's 6 month Drs appt and she continues to get stellar reviews. Here's a quick run down of the stats:

Weight - 16 lbs 4 oz (my guess of 17 lbs came up a bit short) - 60th percentile
Height - 26 1/4" - 75th percentile
Head circumference - 43 1/4 cm - 75th percentile

Interestingly enough, one of the first questions the Dr. asked was whether or not Eloise was getting up sporadically at night. Um, yes. Actually she gets up a lot as of late which is crazy because she used to sleep through the night and had been doing so for months. We figured it was teething since she's has what, 10 million teething signs??  Anyway, the Dr. said that all babies go through a phase where they get up at night just to see us. They like to be reassured knowing that we are there for them and that all we need to do is to go into her room, tell her everything will be OK. Eventually she will get over this phase and she'll sleep through the night again. She'll understand that she is fine and that mommy and daddy are close by.  Ok, well what about the endless nights of crazy crying and jaw tugging?  The red cheeks, the swollen bottom lip? The low grade fever and the ferocious biting? Oh - yeah, that's probably teething. Go ahead and give her a teething toy in her crib. Wow. Alright, so starting tonight, (if we feel she is healthy and not teething), we're going to start the "reassure Monkey program" when she wakes up and see how this goes. I anticipate quite a bit of crying from this one. We're to go into her room and reassure her every 5 minutes. Does this sound like sleep training all over again??? Agh.

Other news from today's appt., the Monkey was given two thumbs up on eating solid foods. So rice cereal started today. Once she got up from her morning nap post Dr. appt. I busted out the Bumbo with the attachable tray (product review on this contraption later), whipped up some rice cereal/breast milk soup and off we went. It's soup season! And I'm here to report.....she loved it.  Amazing. I totally thought she'd spit it out, give me some awesome Eloise fuss face and reject any other spoonful coming her way. Quite the opposite went down. I gave her the first spoonful and then another and another and then....get this....she washed it down with a bottle of water!  The Dr. said to start giving Eloise at least 2-4 ounces of water a day and even more if she'll drink it (up to 8 ounces a day is excellent). Really?? I had no idea they should drink water at this age. Apparently the floride is good for their teeth coming in. Makes sense. So the Dr. actually suggested I give her water in a cup. A cup?? Like a sippy cup?  Really??  Anyway, that worked for all of 0 seconds and so I put water into one of her small Dr. Brown bottles and handed it over. We'll revisit the sippy cup at a later date. She knows the bottle and knows there is something good in there so she always lifts it up to her mouth but she doesn't have the "tilt towards her mouth" part down yet so of course, I still need to help her. So cute to watch though. Anyway, she literally took the bottle and drank water. Again, I was amazed. As of now, she's already drank 2 ounces of water today and probably an ounce of rice cereal. Very impressive, Monkey! After 1-2 weeks of rice cereal, we'll start digging into the cornucopea of baby fruits and veggies for this little kiddo. Since today went so well, I'm really excited to get this process started.

Oh, before I forget, the Monkey was yet again a champ in the shot category. She had 3 shots and 1 oral today and really does amazingly well with them. 1 of the shots was H1N1. They didn't have the seasonal flu shot so we have to either call back in a few weeks or take her to CVS or a local flu clinic.  The H1N1 was just the first shot of 2. She'll need to go back in 21 days (anytime after 3 weeks) so I'm hoping they have the seasonal flu shot stocked up at that point so we can get it on the same day. The seasonal flu shot is also 2 shots so again, we'll need to go back. So many shots for such a little baby.

Today's pics and video are of course, of the Monkey eating her first solid food - super delicious rice cereal. I also grabbed a few pics of her drinking out of her bottle, or at least giving it a valiant effort. Oh, notice the towel Mike put down on the floor for her to eat rice cereal on top of. I'm not really sure what he thought she'd do but maybe he was thinking she'd dive into the rice cereal kicking and screaming. Hilarious. As you'll see from the video, she was quite composed during her first solid food eating session. Click here.

Oh shoot - product review of the Bumbo and the attachable Bumbo tray - bad news. She took a few swipes at the tray and pulled it right off. That's not going to work while feeding her. We have yet to purchase a high chair and I was thinking maybe we could get away with not buying one but that's quickly turned into a fleeting thought. The Bumbo is a total bust. She barely sits in that thing to begin with, and so I thought with the tray, it could have a whole new life. Negative. The Bumbo isn't going to work for feeding her either. Maybe I'll find another purpose for that stupid thing. For tonight, I'm going to feed her cereal one last time for the day and try it this go-round in her Hippo chair. The one she used for Thanksgiving. If that works, then we can get away without a high chair for a little bit longer. We'll see how it goes.