26 Weeks of Lydia

Lydia is six months old today! I find this quite exciting. We got her three new toys to play with, and she was definitely into their novelty. The caterpillar and car seem like good toys for her. The car is pretty much the only good rolling toy she has now, and it’s good for chasing around. She can’t use the stacking rings for their intended purpose at all, which is fine, but there are also a bunch of pieces that roll around a lot. I’m putting it away for now because I know otherwise I’ll be constantly getting the bits from under the couches.

The fussiness last week that I attributed to Wonder Week 26 seems to have passed. It was around the first half of this week, but it’s been a few days since I’ve noticed it, which feels like forever ago in baby world. Still no sign of teeth.

We also started solid food today! She’s been sitting up and putting everything in her mouth quite well for ages, and the last few weeks she’s also seemed particularly focused on food. I was tempted to start earlier, but I figured it would be a good idea to wait until her gut had matured. I don’t know that there’s much importance to it, but, for what it’s worth, I’ve maintained Lydia’s virgin gut until this point.

I’ll talk more about the solids thing below. As you’ll see, I’ve added a new section about it.

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25 Weeks of Lydia

Another week! This week wasn’t as hard for me emotionally as last week, nor was Lydia as happy. But continues to get stronger and learn more things. It’s hard to believe that, as of next week, we’ll have been doing this whole parenting thing for half a year!

Lydia was born a week late, so the crankiness that’s come on recently is just about on time for Wonder Week 26. Not sure how much I really trust that book, since the wonder weeks are so frequent, and they can last up to a month. But I suppose it’s nice to be able to put a label on what’s going on with her.

I also wonder about teething pains, as usual, despite nothing being close to the point of being able to feel any bumps. At one point, she went to town on her frozen washcloths, which is maybe some evidence.

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24 Weeks of Lydia

This week was a hard one for me, for reasons that had nothing to do with Lydia. So it worked out well that it was a happy week for her! I’m definitely telling people she’s five and a half months old now, and she’s learning more and more all the time. I still take her pretty much everywhere with me, and in some ways I think I’ve been in a sweet spot of her being pretty happy to sit around and play on her own, and also not moving very far from where I put her down.

I’m always excited for her to get older and be able to do more stuff, but that’s what I appreciate about where I am now.

These days, it’s working really well for me to accept what she’s doing and not try to influence it much. (The biggest exception is that I can’t help myself with the crawling thing… I do keep putting toys further and further out of her reach because I get excited.) I also take her around with me everywhere, and in a lot of ways by life isn’t that different from my pre-Lydia days. 

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23 Weeks of Lydia

It’s been another week! No huge updates this week, but there have been a bunch of little things. I keep meaning to take more regular notes about what’s going on during the week, but I’m mostly just glad that I’ve been getting around to making these updates every Wednesday, since it all changes so quickly.

Overall, I’d say Lydia was in a pretty good mood this week. The almost cold of last week went away. There were a few times where she was quite upset, but her overall mood was good.

No big disruptions this week. No more camping :-). One party where she fell asleep pretty early in. We did go see Birth Story in the Mission, which went okay but not great. From the invitation posted to the home birth mailing list, I thought there would be more babies there, but my friend Tiffany and I were the only ones who brought ours. Lydia was fine during parts, but would also make noise sometimes. When she did, I stepped outside with her. Our midwife, Maria came in late and took her for a while, since she’d already seen the movie, which was really nice!

So, it probably wasn’t super appropriate to have her there, but it was way more acceptable than having her at any other movie would have been. And a few people came up to me afterwards and said it was nice to hear the babies from time to time, since it was thematic.

I would recommend the movie to anyone interested in Ina May Gaskin, birth, or hippie communities.

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22 Weeks of Lydia

Lydia turned five months old this week, and also went on her first camping trip. I got a really mild cold for a few days last week, though Lydia didn’t seem to be affected much. She was a bit sneezy, and I think she may have been sleeping more because of it.

We were camping from Friday-Sunday. We hiked to a camp ground Friday, stayed there Friday night, then hiked more and went to Harbin hot springs and camped there Saturday night. Sunday, we hiked a bit more before heading home.

My prediction had been that she’d like camping, and that was mostly borne out. She definitely liked hiking. Camping was okay. Sleeping in a tent didn’t seem to be her favorite, but it wasn’t a disaster either. The car rides were probably her least favorite part, though she did spend some time sleeping.

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21 Weeks of Lydia

Lydia will be five months this Sunday, and I’ve started telling people she’s “almost five months” instead of “four and a half months”.

Sleep

I don’t think she’s woken up in the middle of the night this week and stayed up for a while. I skipped swaddling more times this week, so those nights were less restful for me, with more squirming and waking on her part. But nothing particularly memorable happened here.

Eating

She seems bigger again this week, though I haven’t really noticed any difference in nursing patterns. 

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20 Weeks of Lydia

Twenty weeks already! I’ve been referring to Lydia as 4.5 months old, but next week she’ll be nearly 5 months.

Probably the biggest thing this week was her four-month vaccines.

Sleep

A couple of times this week, Lydia has woken up in the middle of the night for a while, not just to feed. Not sure what’s going on here, but it wasn’t actually very disruptive. She didn’t need much soothing at all, and I honestly don’t remember much about what happened or how long she was awake. I just remember her lying there squirming a bit and occasionally making a little noise. I occasionally fed her, and I think one of the times I ended up pottying her before she went to sleep.

I don’t really have a theory about why this happened, but it doesn’t seem to have become a regular pattern. Some nights this past week we skipped the swaddle, and she did seem to both wake up and move around more frequently, so the rest of the time we went back to using it.

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