Elvie Kay turned six months on the 3rd of September.
Six months always seems like such a big milestone. Half a year! Time for real food! Time for sitting up! Time for the latter half of our first year of life! Four months is tiny, five months sort of unremarkable, but six months means things are really starting to get interesting, right?
Actually this month has already been very interesting, no six-month-birthday required, no sitting up or real food (yet.) Elvie Kay spent this past month becoming more and more mobile, and simultaneously perfecting her nights and destroying her naps.
But I’ll try not to get ahead of myself, here.
Early in the month, Elvie began sleeping twelve hours at night. This was, of course, a very welcome milestone, and something of a surprise, because two of the three older boys needed a bit of nudging in that direction. Clive did it on his own (and through my careful overseeing of his daytime schedule.) And Elvie Kay seemed to just work it out for herself, even though her daytime routine was still sort of fuzzy. (That is what happens when you’re baby #4.)
After her nights came together, we had a couple of beautiful weeks where her days did, too. All naps were perfect, and everything just worked out the way it was supposed to. I am glad for that, because once she started getting up on her hands and knees, all naptime became Crawling Practice Time and that was that. I think she didn’t nap at all for a week.
Every naptime followed the same pattern: I would put her down. She would be quiet for approximately thirty minutes (this is probably when she was doing her Setting Up Exercises). Then she would start cooing and caterwauling, and you knew she was up on her knees. Then she’d start fussing. Then she’d cry, and I’d go in to see her wedged all cattywampus in the corner of her crib, with her head down and her butt in the air and her little feet pushing just as hard as they could, not understanding why her head was stuck. So I’d rearrange her and give her her blankie and her pacifier back and kiss her head and shut the door, and if we were lucky she would go to sleep then, and if we weren’t lucky, the whole process would start over again. Each cycle took about an hour to complete–sometimes longer.
Ephraim did the same thing when he learned to crawl–of course, he was ten-and-a-half months old when he did it. But he boycotted naps for a week, and we never did get them back–I had to switch him to one nap at thirteen months after fighting with him for five months. Ugh, I don’t even like to think about it.
Clive and Anselm never did this, though. They were totally immobile until just after their first birthdays, when they started scooching on their butts. They never boycotted naps with this newfound mobility, and they didn’t even mess up their naps with rolling over, now that I’m thinking about it. Oh, Elvie. Couldn’t this all have waited?
At least she is still sleeping all night, no matter how crazy she makes her days.
While her motor skills are way ahead of what her brothers’ were, her hair growth has been incredibly slow in comparison. What is coming in still has a very reddish quality to it sometimes. I wish it would come in, already, so I can see what it looks like!
Her eyes are the strangest color I’ve seen in the kids. They’re blue, but they’re not really blue. They’re a deep blue-grey with a bit of…well, desaturated tan in the middle. Really, they’re more grey than blue. It’s strange. They look blue…they’re not blue. Not like Ephraim’s, anyway. I’m not sure what they’re doing, but they do seem to be stuck there for the meantime. Maybe they’ll stay that way?
She’s become quite proficient in the Johnny-Jump-Up, but really prefers to lounge around on the floor so she can practice her skillz. She loves watching her brothers play, and really lights up when she sees someone she knows. She’s getting less and less likely to fall asleep on me in church, preferring instead to bounce up and down or blow spit bubbles or make very loud kissy noises and then laugh uproariously at Clive when he tries to shush her. She’s a mess.
Every now and then she makes a face that looks just like Ephraim. When you turn her sideways, her profile looks like Clive’s. The only one she doesn’t seem to have much in common with is Anselm–though it may be that she shares his mischievous streak or his infectious giggle. She already has his shrieking almost-a-laugh-but-more-like-a-scream. That may not make much sense, but if you heard it, you’d understand.
Pam says
Our Tiny Butters is making history in her own way for the Krans family. She is going through the milestones at a quick and normal pace. Now if we could just get that hair moving. We are all curious of color texture and curl. Way to go baby!!!