Bethany Turns 6 Months!!

On December 26th Bethany turned 6 months old! I can't believe so much time has passed already! She remains extremely tiny. I don't know how much she weighs and we won't find out until her wellness check on Jan 14th, but I know she is still itty-bitty. Her 3 month sized clothes fit her perfectly right now and we'll see how long it takes her to grow into some of her 6 month outfits.

Her personality is finally starting to come through as she smiles and wriggles with glee when we go into her room to get her in the morning. Like her brother, Bethany tends to wake up happier than she was when she went down (at least when she's gotten a good amount of sleep-- 10 minute catnaps don't usually produce the same happy results). She is hard to put to bed at night, but Casey and I have decided that we've had enough pacing, rocking, and soothing for hours on end each night and have started sleep training with the "cry-it-out" method. It's been three nights, and it's honestly going pretty well. Hopefully it will continue to get better so that everyone can start getting to bed earlier around here! Naps are still very difficult, however, and she fights them tooth and nail. If you have any suggestions on how to help a baby take naps, I'm all ears. We're getting pretty tired of the 10 minute naps she takes since they are clearly not enough. We use the swing a lot as a crutch. I know the experts say we shouldn't, but really, if it works....

Bethany is a very quiet baby. Not that she hasn't proven her ability to be very loud when she is unhappy, but she doesn't babble or coo very much. She has perfect hearing. I know because if you breathe wrong when tip-toeing into her room at night, she will wake up and catch you. Also, Emmett has an uncanny ability to wake her up when he goes to bed throwing loud temper-tantrums in the room next to hers. This is not a nightly occurrence, but often enough to be annoying. She simply doesn't babble. She smiles, whines, and occasionally coos, gurgles, squeaks, and laughs. But there is no experimentation with phonetic sounds yet or true babbling. We've decided not to worry unless the doctor tells us to worry, but it is something that I am watching and waiting for. I'll be interested to hear what he says at the wellness check-up.

If we didn't have the swing, I think everyone in our house would be a hysterical mess. Really. This beautiful device has saved our sanity, if not our lives.

Sleeping in Daddy's lap. I love these quiet, sweet moments! It's things like this that you miss so much as they get bigger.

Casey looks funny. Hehe. :)

We put her in the bumbo to try to feed her rice cereal, and she always twists around, stretches, and tries to get out of her seat. Crazy little monkey.

I snapped this picture this afternoon after church. I love this photo. The three people I love most in the world.

Sweet baby girl!

Wearing Emmett's bear hat. :)

Smiling for her daddy in her new car bouncer. Bethany just adores Casey!