This truly is a beautiful age, 6 months old and learning, changing, growing so quickly; it’s amazing to watch Aviana become a mini person and not so much a baby. We are getting insights into her personality – it’s fun to nurture and shape her. Well, I like to think we have some impact on her at least!

At half a year old, or 26 weeks, Aviana weighs 13lbs 6oz (she remains in the 5th percentile but following her own growth curve nicely) and is 26″ tall (we think she is actually longer than that because she was all hunched up lying down on the chart). 

She has practically outgrown her 3-6mth clothes length wise before she hit 6 months. Her 6-9mth clothes fit her perfectly in length, not so much width wise! So it’s a bit odd. she still fits some 0-3 items of clothing because of her skinny-ness. I bought her swim stuff in size 3-6mths because I figured she would be in it for a mo th or two longer like she was in newborn and 0-3mths. I was so wrong…she has caught up from her Small IUGR size in length to be ‘normal’ size. Typical!

Aviana has had eczema, it comes and goes, we think she is allergic to some type of perfume, detergent, something people wear because it gets worse if her skin is exposed and is being picked up by other people. We’ve changed our laundry detergent to be zero anything (we are not sure how it actually cleans our clothes!) But it seems to help. The doc thinks it might be something she’s eating but we really can’t see any patterns. Yesterday the doc gave us a very specific routine to help with the Eczema. When we bath her and lather her in Cetaphil baby wash. When we take her out of bath, pat her down gently, rub 1% hydrocortisone (with no additives such as aloe, just plain cream) onto her patchy areas, then lather and rub in baby eucerin eczema cream all over her body. Also put hydrocortisone on in morning too. We did this last night and the difference was amazing this morning. Let’s hope this works because the poor girl is learning how to itch and she has been scratching her head hard and causing little wounds. 

Despite her eczema she is an adorable little girl. Chris thinks she’s starting to look more like me. I’m not so sure. We are wondering if her eyes will change to brown like Chris’s or be like mine a grey/green with brown specks. So far they are a grey/blue still. 

She is sitting up on her own, she can stand up on her own leaning against something but can’t yet pull herself up. She’s rolled front to back but not back to front, although we believe she can – it’s just not her favourite place to be so she has no incentive to! She would much rather be upright than lying down.

She likes being carried in the meh dai wraps we bought and can happily fall asleep in it. The afternoon after her 6mth vaccinations she fell asleep in the wrap for 1.5hrs! 

We bought her an A-Frame interactive walker toy (second hand from OfferUp! for $10). She loves sitting in front of that and playing with it. She loves being in her Einstein jumper bouncer thingy. I’ve picked her up from daycare and she has been happily bouncing away in it but I haven’t seen her do it at home so much. She loves sitting down to read with us. I’ve put away the play gym mat because she really has no interest in it anymore. It made me a bit sad because it’s the first toy I’m putting away that she is growing out of.

Food wise Aviana has tried so far…apples, oat cereal, baby porridge, blueberries (whole and puréed), banana (whole and squashed), squash, sweet potato, carrots, spinach, broccoli, peas (whole), white bread and butter, yum yum teething wafers and plain Greek yoghurt. She can feed herself Whole Foods by hand, she is getting better at eating purées from a spoon but likes to help put the spoon in her mouth! She takes water from a sippy cup and likes to help herself but hasnt quite figured how to do it on her own.  She is sitting down and eating breakfast and dinner with us at the table, we try to eat food that she can also have and will keep doing that. She also has lunch at daycare. She drinks about 24oz of breast milk a day, 6oz four times a day, plus a bit of a top up before bed if I nurse her (she falls asleep almost instantly so she doesn’t take much!). So far she hasn’t really disliked any particular food, she just has her favourites – Apple, squash and bread!

Aviana had her first boat trip last weekend when we went to Annapolis and loved watching the wake from the boat!

 We headed up to Washington DC to get her enrolled in Global Entry (if you are ever wondering, babies are exempt from finger print scanning but still have to have their picture taken for facial recognition!!!) we took a quick trip to Annapolis on the way, it was lovely. We proved we can do a family road trip and get out and see some sights for a weekend. Next time we might try camping 🤗

This weekend we are going to the pool on Saturday and Sunday, then to the beach in Tuesday! This will be her first experience, hopefully it will be fun and not too miserable.

I know I will blink and she will be a 1 year old toddling around (maybe!). Got to savour these wonderful moments ☺️