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First of all, I’d like to mention that this trip was made for Alexis. Yes, we were both DYING to go to Disney again, so that played into the decision to take her to Disneyworld, despite the fact that she is too young to take too much out of it. However, the purpose was to go there hoping she’d enjoy it as much as we do, see the sights and have a new experience. We have been Disney passholders for as long as I remember living in Florida, so we had already done our share of rides and Disney fun. This was our turn to introduce the Magical World to our daughter.

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Dear, girl!

You are half a year old. 6 months. It’s a big deal! It’s a really big deal! So much has changed. YOU have changed.

This month brought on so many changes. These changes almost sneaked upon us. Without warning. Just BOOM – you’re different.

The biggest thing I’ve noticed is you LOOK older. You look like a little girl. It’s quite adorable. You make cute little girl faces, and wave your arms around in frustration or happiness. Those two can come one after another.

You’re the most amazing kid on the planet. Like really, you bring us joy every day. And you are becoming easier and easier to handle every day.  You laugh so much, you’re such a happy girl. Six months rocks. Really- the best age so far!

You’re becoming more and more beautiful. Either that or I am getting more and more biased because I love you more with each day. Your eyes are so big and blue and so captivating. Your lips have that perfect pout and you have the most rounded head I’ve ever seen.

This month has had a lot of firsts for you:

You had your first road trip to Orlando, your first wedding reception, your first 4th of July party and many others I’ll mention below.

You did amazing at the late night 4th of July party. You were too busy looking around to realize that it was past your bedtime and wouldn’t go to sleep even when I tried putting you down in the  quiet and dim nursery.

You’re into both mommy and daddy more and more each day. My favorite part is when daddy goes to get you when you wake up from your nap and brings you out to me while I am working on my laptop, and you JUST LIGHT up and start kicking and bouncing in his arms so hard that he can barely hold you.

You had your first stay at the hotel and you absolutely loved it. You loved seeing all the places and people. You slept just as well as you do at home and you never complained. Except on your 4 hour ride home, which was a little bit rough.

You do so good in the car now. As long as you have a toy to entertain you and switch them around periodically or  I talk to you or sing to you, or play peekaboo, you’re happy as a clam. You will actually fall asleep in the car seat pretty consistently if you’re very tired with some help from mommy or daddy (singing usually helps).

You are wary of strangers, yet with enough time and smiles, you smile back and bounce in my arms. You’re super social while staying cautious of anyone you don’t know.

You met your auntie Boom Boom and you loved her. You took to her very quickly and allowed yourself being carried around and played with.

You cut your first 2 teeth. For some reason, it is so special to me. Your first tooth came through after a few days of fussier than normal behavior, though I cannot reliably connect it with teething. At first I saw the gum getting whiter and then there was a blackish dot on top of it. I was sure it was a tooth, but your daddy didn’t believe me. And sure enough the next day there was a white cap. And then the same thing happened with the second bottom tooth. They are still pretty small but your smiles are even more adorable now.

You are a much more proficient sitter now. You’re strong and solid. You LOVE playing with your hands while sitting up. Your coordination is so good now. You grab a toy with one or two hands while sitting down and then you start shaking it side to side. Eventually you accidentally let go and your toy goes flying a few feet in the air. You easily reach for things all around you when sitting. You love playing with your Finn&Emma gym while sitting up.

You don’t know how to get into a sitting position, but you do know how to move from sitting to crawling/tummy down.

You aren’t a crawler yet. I was sure that after getting on your knees last month, you’d be crawling by now, but you somehow shifted your focus to other things and put crawling aside until just a few days ago when you went back to trying to get on your knees and move.

I find it really cool how you keep switching from thing to thing working on different skills at different times. It’s a little bit like me. I usually get interested in so many things at once I have to split my attention between them.

And the big one is you rolled over from your back to your tummy. And then to your tummy again. And that was that. I knew you had been waiting for something to start rolling consistently and that something was  apparently going from back to tummy. As soon as you knew how to put yourself into your favorite position, the other way around wasn’t an issue. You still prefer scooting on your tummy to rolling around, but you’ll occasionally roll when you need to get a toy or for the fun of it. You became really good at it, too. After the very first roll from back to tummy, you kind of just continued doing it all without hesitation whenever you needed to.

You’re quite the social butterfly nowadays, you love smiling at people after you’re done studying them and determining whether they are good or not. We had painters getting our house finished last week and oh my god, you just couldn’t stop smiling and talking to them.

Speaking of talking, that picked up too (I can tell you worked hard on many things this month). You try to talk to us and strangers as much as you can, but it’s mostly raspberries, aghoos, and these forced screams and types of sounds that make me think you want to go potty. Only recently did I realize that  it is you attempting to talk to all of us by screeching and you’re trying to make sounds the only way you can right now. In the last few days you have expanded your vocabulary to include more ba-ba-bas and na-na-nas and ma-ma-mas and all kinds of different sounds that really sound like speech. So much fun!

You still sleep with us, even though I try to start you off in the crib each night, but you won’t have any of that silliness. You have to feel mama’s breath on you or touch her, or the best thing in the world: nurse to sleep. Oh, you love that and I love it just as much. You didn’t used to be a baby that nursed to sleep, but it’s something that I sort of started with the bedtime routine. I might regret later, but for now I treasure the times when you fall asleep at the breast.

I really enjoy lying down with you, though I don’t get to do it often, because your short naps are the only time I can write for the blog. But the time that I spend rocking you is one of my favorite times during the day. I love smelling your sour milk cheeks and feeling your warm breath and having your soft squishy body cuddle into my arms. Seriously, I will miss it so much when it’s gone.

The last two weeks you’ve been playing on your own for good stretches of time (10-15 minutes), but we are still always there whenever you need us once you’re done playing. I’ve been putting a pillow behind you so that if you fall you don’t hit your head.

Your sleep is still the same. Every 2 hours seems to be your thing at night and every 40 minutes during the day.

You developed this shy smile that is just beyond adorable! It’s this tentative little thing that soon evolves into a big grin and a little nose scrunching. I love your nose -scrunching. And snorting- oh your snorting is beyond adorable ( probably to me only). I really need to get that on video (put it on my today’s to-do list)

You’re IN LOVE with water! Such a water baby, it makes me so happy! You squeal with delight whenever you get splashed, you love being rained on or going under sprinklers, having fun bath time with daddy or when mommy fills up a big girl tub and lets you play there with her.

We recently bought your a non-vinyl baby pool and you adore splashing in it. You’ll laugh every time you get water in your eyes and face.

You also had your first swim in the pool. Again it was a great hit. I’d hold you up and you’d kick your legs and swim like a big girl. We are now going to the pool every other day or so and it’s by far your favorite activity

You’re also back in your cloth diapers which makes mama so happy. I am excited to be buying more cute colors and prints and ditching the disposables.

Your first boat trip happened this month, as well. You did so good. It was pretty hot, even though we got started early and kept you in the shade. You fussed occasionally when it got hot or when we had to put an lifevest on you, but as soon as the boat would pick up speed and you’d feel the wind on your face, you’d start bouncing and smiling. We love watching you experience new things.

Here’s a big one: YOU STARTED BLW! {baby  led weaning}. I say YOU because you truly commanded this one. I’ve been keeping you away from solids even though you’ve been able to sit unsupported and have been reaching for our food and had the pincer grasp down since 4.5 months. I wanted to wait till 6 months. You had other plans and you let me know. One day you grabbed a cherry out of my hands and started gumming on it. So I bit into it for you to see what you’d do. Well, as soon as you tasted the juice your eyes got all big and you started sucking it out and gumming more. The next day as you were sitting in my lap and I was eating a peach, you reached out and took the peach with one hand (I didn’t stop you this time), you instantly brought it to your mouth like you positively knew what you were doing and started EATING it. I took that as a clue that you were ready and eager to start solids. Since then we’ve been ocassionally giving you whatever it is we were eating as long it was appropriate. You’ve had peaches, strawberries, zuccinnis, avocados, potatoes, mushrooms, plum,  navy beans, red pepper, banana and maybe a few more I am forgetting.

You love it, you truly love exploring food, playing with it, chewing it, learning how to manipulate it in your mouth and swallow it. And we enjoy watching you learn. I am looking forward to you joining us at all our meals.

Your personality is sparkling! You’re expressive, fun, you smile so widely when you see people you like/love, you get so intently focused on things one second and another you’ll just lying there pondering the problems of the world.

On a serious note, recently I’ve had this weird train of thoughts ( you know how sometimes a situation pops into your head and you think about what you’d do in that case).. Well, with the Colorado shooting, I’ve been thinking a lot about what would I do in situations where our lives are in danger. And without a millisecond delay, there’s no question in my mind that I would give my life for a 1% chance of saving yours.

For readers

In this post:

Hair flower: Hopscotch Boutique

Wooden Gym: Finn&Emma

Non-PVC pool: The Pop Up Pool

Excersaucer: Evenflo Jam Session

Upcoming Posts:

Written and scheduled to post: First Swing Ride, Nursery Updates, Morning walks

In the process: 4th of July, Boat Trip, Orlando Trip, Time Management, Parenting Duties Split, Baby Safety

Reviews/Giveaways: Maxi Cosi car seat, Mutsy stroller, Tiny Love, and more

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Everyone has bought and used bouncers, seats, swings for their babies, and they are all fine, all virtually the same and work relatively good for most babies. Not for Alexis, who has done her best to defy everything that is written about newborns and babies out there. She feels “Meh!!” about most of them. We’ve tried 4-5 different seats and she hasn’t really liked them all that well.

One of the issues that some natural parenting books and authors have with seats and bouncers is the fact that the baby is completely limited in how they can move when place in these seats. So instead of moving around, or moving to adjust to the parent’s body while they’re carried in carriers or in arms, babies are sitting near motionless in these “baby-holders”.  We’ve done a really good job spending a ton of time carrying Alexis and playing with her on the floor, facilitated by family help around the house and the fact that we both work from home.

However, sometimes a baby just needs to be put in a seat- that’s a fact of life and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t strap her in a carrier when you need to make a meal- that’s dangerous. You can’t walk around picking things up and bending with a baby in a carrier. You cannot eat a hot meal with a baby in a carrier. I also never appreciated the fact that these seats have to always be on the floor. What kind of brain development can you expect from a baby when all she/he can see is your legs? I know, it is frowned upon, but we got around it by putting Lexi in a bouncer on a huge center island in the kitchen as long as there’s at least one parent who is constantly watching (and not doing something else, but is there TO watch and talk to her). But I never felt ok letting anyone else watch her because I couldn’t trust them not to step away for  second thinking “Oh nothing would happen” .

{ Lexi is wearing a Polarn O Pyret onesie and Jefferies Socks’ tights }

Now what I found recently is a seat that is very diffferent from anything I’ve seen out there.

It’s by The First Years and it’s called a Kicking Coaster.

First of all, it’s sturdy. As in, it has the kind of base that cannot be tipped over. It’s not a bouncer, it doesn’t move in a way a bouncer does. A baby simply can’t get enough inertia to flip it over. So I feel much much better putting it at our eye level when cooking and talking with her. Now I am sure The First Years doesn’t recommend putting it on high ground, just like some other products  have to warn against some ridiculous situation that any normal person wouldn’t even think to create, like don’t stick your fingers into an outlet or something equally crazy. Yes, we all know to never leave a baby unattented in most situations. It’s a given. But I feel pretty darn good about being right next to her cooking while she plays in the seat, BECAUSE she is strapped into the kind of seat that isn’t prone to “flipage”

What also makes it very different from other seats is the fact that  it’s interactive from the motor skills standpoint. Alexis would NEVER stand for sitting stationary in anything. She won’t sit in a stroller unless it is moving, in a carrier unless she is being walked, in a seat unless she’s talked to, on the floor unless she has foot support to crawl. She is the furthest from a complacent baby I have ever seen. {which paints a very hectic future for us once she is truly mobile}.

This seat is the only one that somewhat entertains her for a period of time. The seatbelt has a rattle/teether attached to it that I promptly replaced with an organic Haba clutching toy (you know me). Though I have to say that possibly that was unecessary, because The First Years products rate EXCELLENT on HealthyStuff.org
It has a kicky pad that is soft and rebounding and the seat itself glides back and forth when pushed (or can be made stationary for newborns). She’d kick off with her legs and straighten them thus sending the seat back, then relax her knees and glide back down. And every time she touches the kicky pad, she gets rewarded with lights and music. And unlike some other kicky pads (yes, it’s you, Tiny Love Gym that we love so much, except for your kicky pad sucks), it’s very touchy. So it doesn’t take a lot of effort to trigger it (sometimes our cats trigger it by brushing against it).

She really does get a kick out of it (get it? get it? ) and as she grows and gets smarter and even more aware, she’ll enjoy it even more.

So  why we love it:

• touchy kick pad
• lights and music
• glides back and forth rather than bounces
• reacts to baby’s motions
• lets baby exercise his/her legs
• can be made stationary with a click of a button

The only complaint I have is the recline of the seat. It seems awkward for Alexis. It’s sort of reclined. I think it was designed that way to accommodate both newborns and older babies, but I wish it was more upright. But to be completely fair, Alexis hates anything that is half way reclined, because she wants to sit upright all the time, so I am very surprised that she’ll actually tolerate the recline of this seat for a bit.

The First Years has a lot of baby items that I like, so be sure to check their website.

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Disclosure: I was not compensated for this post. The First Years provided me with a product sample to review. All opinions are 100% my own.