Following Where He Leads...: Abigail is 6 Months Old

Abigail is 6 months old now.

At her last appointment (12/17), she weighed 20 lb and 12 oz. Sissy is now wearing 2T clothes, like the black and white outfit in the above picture.

I just love having a squeezy, squishy, healthy girl!

I was concerned that the doctor might think A weighed too much (never dealt with this with G!), but Dr. D said that because her height (99th percentile) and weight (97th percentile) were consistent, it was is a sign that she's just a big, healthy girl...thriving on her homemade formula. (If, on the other hand, her weight was 97th percentile, but her height was say, 40th percentile...we might need to be concerned!)

While I have played around with A having a little bit of "solid" food, it was just that: playing. Just a few times, and not much at all. She hasn't been interested in any of it lately, so she hasn't had anything besides formula in weeks. The formula is just agreeing with her...and her hair (more on that later). She is taking four or five 8-oz bottles of the formula a day right now.

Abigail is mastering new tasks and milestones right and left.

She can pick up her paci and put it in her own mouth now. (Although sometimes it ends up in there backwards or sideways.)

She is getting very close to being able to keep herself sitting up.

But for right now, we keep guards close by to make sure she doesn't take a tumble.

She has started pushing herself backwards, inchworm style. She can end up pretty far away from where we set her down on her blanket on the floor.

As much as she likes to inch backward, her main mode of transportation is rolling. She rolls from her belly to her back, and then keeps right on going over to her belly again. And she will just keep on going, until she rolls into the piano. Or the sofa.

The problem with rolling all around the floor is that her HAIR picks up everything it passes over. Ugghhh! Now that I type this out, it occurs to me that maybe we need to vacuum in there more than once a week. Nah, that couldn't be the problem.

Abigail also spends quite a bit of time high-centered...

....but she has gotten up on all fours a few times:

I am ~~afraid~~ thinking that it might not be much longer until she is crawling. Lord, help us! (I'm not taking the Lord's name in vain here...I'm really praying for help! When G has an accomplice in creating mischief around here, we are sure enough going to be in trouble with a capital T!!)

Abigail has had several baths in the tub now. The children fight over who gets to take a turn with her (since she isn't sitting up well enough to be in there by herself). She didn't seem real sure of the whole thing the first time...but she has started loosening up and splashing some now.

It seems like not long ago at all that we put away the IKEA high chair and Gabriel moved into a booster seat at the table with us. We realized a week or two ago that it was time to pull that high chair back out and sit Missy with us (up until now, if she was awake during mealtimes, she would sit in our laps).

She seems to love the chair. We put toys on there for her to play with. I don't know why we bother, because within about 2 seconds flat she has flung them right off the tray and onto the floor. I don't necessarily think she is intending to fling them off. Sometimes, yes, but sometimes I think she is trying to grab them and just accidentally flings them. But, hope springs eternal, and we keep picking the toys up and putting them back on the tray for her....

Abigail has also begun using the jumperoo. Some. She still hasn't seemed to quite figure it out. She will bounce just a little, but mostly just hangs there looking cute. G loved his jumper, but it may not prove to be A's thing.

Lately Abigail doesn't look at my face anymore. She looks just off to the right or left...at my earrings. And then grabs for them. So, guess what I'm not wearing very often anymore?

Jas and I keep saying that it is almost time to move A out of her bassinet...but we still haven't made the switch. She still sleeps in the bassinet in our room at night. Then we wheel her into the family room during the day, where she naps during the day, and then we wheel it back to our room when we go to bed.

Lately, Abigail just takes several catnaps during the day. Three of four little naps, maybe...but none for longer than 30 minutes or so. I've been thinking that Abigail doesn't seem to need as much sleep as Gabriel did...but two things just occurred to me as I was preparing to type that:

1. Gabriel didn't sleep through the night until he was 14 months old. (She has since she was 9 weeks)

2. A is napping in the (not-so-quiet) family room during the day. (duh, Joli...maybe if she were in a quieter place she would nap longer)

Either way, when I think about it, I think their total sleeping time is probably about the same, just broken up differently.

It is a bit unnerving to look over and see Abigail's eyes looking at us over the edge of the bassinet:

...I suppose we should move her out of there before she is able to get up and climb out herself!

Part of our hesitation to go ahead and move her to the girl's room is that she was having some issues with waking up several times during the night. She was only awake briefly, just long enough for us to poke her paci back in and then she'd be asleep again. When E and I were talking about it (because she asked when A could move in there) I explained our hesitation about her waking up several times in the night. She started to respond by saying, "Well, move her in our room..." and I though she was going to say, "and it will be fine." But what she REALLY ended up saying was, "...after she gets that figured out!" I burst out laughing! As much as E is excited about sissy moving in with them...a girl has to draw the line somewhere! My E has always loved her sleep!

Now to talk about a (not-so) minor thing....

HAIR!

Abigail has lots of it. Especially for a six-month old. I was sitting and talking with a young mom at our church's recent Family Supper. Her AA daughter is 4 days older than Abigail (and her name also begins with an A). Baby A's weight is about 60% of Abigail's...and Abigail has MUCH more hair than Baby A. I thought Abigail had a lot of hair for a six-month old, but didn't know for sure. But Taylor agreed that Abigail has a lot of hair. Is it genetics? Diet? Both? I don't know...

Anyway, it is time to get serious about her hair care. I have been reading and accumulating products and accessories for months. Here is just one of the most recent hauls:

The seam ripper in the lower left is for removing one-use rubber bands

All those products/accessories need a home. A mobile home, ideally...because sometimes we do her hair in one spot, and the next day we're in another spot. I had fun purchasing these organizational items at Michael's, and they have been working out great for us!

With how excited I get about organizational products,
you'd think my house was super-organized. You'd be wrong.

Abigail has very tight coils with a diameter less than a pencil eraser. Here is a picture I took of me (gently) pulling one of her coils up straight, to show how long her hair is:

Her hair is about 3.75" long when pulled straight.

One night after I washed Abigail's hair, I started playing, and before I knew it...we had our first 'do:

The parts are horrid, and I almost don't want to post them, but I want us to remember the steps we (I!) go through in learning how to properly care for and fix her beautiful curls. (One day we'll look back and laugh...or cringe.)

A few days later I was determined to give it another go...and do better on parts.

So we sat Sissy in the bumbo seat (thank you so much, Mrs. Carol...I don't know how we'd "do" hair without it right now)...grab the pintail comb...and go to town on those parts:

Another thing I need to work on? Having a more pleasant look on my face while I work! Yikes!

Maybe Sissy's face is pleasant enough for both of us?

Gaw...I scare myself. Glad Abigail wasn't looking at me!

I had to lean down and get some sugar while I was so close to her:

And then...we were done:

Again...not great at all...but I know I need to start somewhere:

Two flat twists were supposed to go diagonally to the left, and two to the right. "Supposed" is the operative word.

Sissy didn't seem to mind the whole experience too much...

...although it did leave her hungry, apparently:

Now the morning after that hairdo? I took the little twists out and we were left with a rather, ummmm....interesting 'do:

Noah piped up, "She looks like Einstein. I'll call her Abigail Einstein!"

The great thing is, all you have to do is spritz a little water on her hair and it springs back into beautiful little coils! Ta-da!

Seeing Baby A's hair in a little "puff" inspired me to try puffs for Abigail...although Abigail's larger head and larger volume of hair necessitated two puffs. ("Puffs" really is the correct term)

These were cute....for a few hours.

By the time she woke up from a nap in the early afternoon, the little one-use rubberbands had both disintegrated. I'd read that some brands will break down and do that because of the oil there (coconut oil in this case)...and that some brands won't. I picked the wrong brand at first.

I kept reading how important it is for kinky curly hair to NOT sleep on cotton...and instead sleep on satin/silky material (a sleep cap/silky scarf or pillowcase, or a combination thereof). The cotton wicks moisture away from already moisture-impaired hair, and causes friction and breakage.

So, E and I betook ourselves to Sally (my new favorite store...next to TSC), and we bought this little black sleep cap...

...and used it exactly one night.

I tested it to see if it would be breathable if it happened to slip down over her nose while she slept. It was. But still, when I first looked in her bassinet in the morning and saw her ENTIRE face covered by the sleep cap, it gave me such a heart attack that we aren't going there again for a LONG time.

Next, we tried a silky scarf tied around her head. Didn't stay on at all. So, we're still working on this aspect of hair care...

Here are some random pics of loving on Abigail. "Take a picture of us" is a frequent refrain around here...