6 months old!

Today Chloe is 6 months old! It is so crazy that she is growing up so fast! She had her doctor's appointment yesterday, and here are her stats: weight is 16 pounds, 14.7 ounces, which is 71st percentile; height is 26 1/4 inches, which is the 72nd percentile.

Here is a picture of her on the scale, clasping her hands in her "perfect angel baby" pose. She ended up not getting shots yesterday, because she had her 4 month shots late because of the hives outbreak. She did great during her appointment, and did not cry or complain at all. Here Chloe is waiting for the doctor and chewing on one of her favorite teething rings. Still no teeth yet, but she loves to chew on anything she can. Here is another cute picture. Chloe was more interested in chewing on her high chair tray than eating the cereal we were trying to feed her.
Chloe is helping us with laundry...

Happy Father's Day!

We had a great Father's Day weekend. We celebrated Father's Day with Andrew's family on Friday, and then got in the car Saturday afternoon and drove up to Redding. My Aunt Bev and Uncle George celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on Sunday, and their daughter Karen threw them a big party. It was fun for my extended family to meet Chloe. Despite her rough morning on Saturday (see post below), Chloe was great in the car on Saturday and all day Sunday. She was the hit of the party!

Andrew was nice enough to share his first father's day with the anniversary party and a bunch of other fathers. I am so lucky to be married to Andrew and Chloe is even luckier to have him as her daddy. She loves him so much, and she says da da da da da all day long. I try to convince Andrew that Chloe is calling out for him, especially during diaper changes, but it does not always work! We are working to teach her the ma sound, but have not had any luck yet!

I did not take any pictures of the weekend, other than the poses below:

Screaming baby

For those of you who only see cute pictures of the smiling Chloe that I post, you might not believe this post. Chloe did not sleep much last night, and took a very short morning nap. She woke up from this nap SCREAMING. And the screaming would not stop. I was able to distract her briefly with toys or going outside, tried feeding her and putting her back to sleep, but nothing worked to clam her down. So finally, I grabbed a Diet Coke and some chocolate and loaded Chloe into the car. Within 5 minutes, she was sound asleep. I always heard about friends who used the car to get their kids to sleep, but I always thought that I would not be one of those parents. I am sorry to all of the parents out there who I thought this about. I understand the desperation after having a crying baby for hours and not knowing what else to do. Chloe is still asleep in the car, which is parked in my driveway with the windows down. I am sitting in the garage watching her, because I am afraid to take her out of the car and have her wake up. Is it sad that I am afraid of my almost 6 month old baby??

Solid food!

So Chloe is about 5 1/2 months old now, and her doctor told me to wait until she was 6 months old to give her solid food, but I just could not wait! Chloe is so interested in food now. Whenever Andrew and I are eating something she tries to reach for it and she loves to suck on water bottles and glasses. Empty ones, of course! Here she is waiting for the food....
Yummy rice cereal! It her her a few spoonfuls to figure out how to swallow, but she got the hang of it pretty quickly! (in these pictures, Chloe's hair looks orangish, but it is really not that color. I think it is the hot pink high chair cover making a funny contrasting color.)
Chloe thinks she is ready to feed herself!!

Loving books!

Chloe had fun going to work with mom this week and getting to meet some of her students! While in the car, she kept a tight grip on her book--her new favorite toy! She loves to drool all over it!! With a teacher for a mom and a grandma who was a reading specialist, I can only hope that her love of reading will continue!

Rolling over

So, Chloe now officially is able to roll from her back to her stomach. For the past few days, I would leave Chloe on her back on her play mat and then return to find her on her stomach. It is sad though, because once she rolls, she usually gets upset and starts crying. I usually find her face down and crying. It is so interesting to me that she knows how to roll over from her stomach to her back, but does not realize that she needs to do so to rescue her at the moment. Oh well. I am hoping she learns this quickly, as I had to go roll her over multiple times during the night last night, because she woke me up with her muffled cries, as she was face down in her crib. I had nightmares of her suffocating. That wisdom of not letting babies sleep on their stomachs was stressing me out!!

Mother's day photos & Swaddling issues

So, I have to apologize that it has taken me a week to get these pictures off my camera, onto my computer, and posted here. I blame two things. First, our desktop computer is broken so Andrew and I have been sharing my work laptop. It seems like whenever I thought about blogging, he was using the computer. Second, I blame the heat! It has been so hot here and it is hard for me to get motivated when it is so hot out!!

Anyway, our mother's day was lovely. Andrew made me a poster of Chloe's hand and foot prints and wrote "I love mom" on it. It was so sweet! He also made me breakfast in bed on Sunday! What a great dad! After church, we had lunch at Andrew's mom's house and celebrated mother's day and Andrew's birthday. Andrew, Pete, and Kristen made a yummy lunch and we had a great afternoon.

Here are a few pictures of the day:

Chloe and me in grandma's backyard. I love her chunky legs!!

Three generations!! This is not the best photo of me or my mom, but I love the expression on Chloe's face. She loves to stick out her tongue and spit everywhere!

The girl cousins...

All the cousins together. Grandma bought matching clothes for all of them. So cute! It is so hard to get them to all look at the camera at the same time!! This is the best photo I ended up with of the five of them.

The following picture was taken today after Chloe's nap:

We put her to bed with both arms tightly swaddled. After an hour, she had managed to break both of them free. It does not seem to matter what type of blanket we use, or how tightly we swaddle her, she manages to get her arms out. We usually find her sucking on her hands and talking and laughing. She is so happy to be free. The only problem is that she cannot sleep unless she is swaddled. We've tried! I think she is ready to sleep without being wrapped up tight, but I don't know how to teach her.....Advice??