6 Month Update

First I can't believe my little baby girl is 6 months old. She went for her check up on Friday all is well with Little E. All systems checked out great. She is growing like a weed and even the doctor was impressed with her stats. She weighed in at 14lb 1 oz, 24.75 inches long, and 16.3 inch head cir. All of this is great but what is even more impressive is her jump in her percentiles. She is in the 17th% for weight, 19th% for height, and 21st% for head circumference for her actual age! She is not only on the growth chart for her actual age but is moving up on it every month. At 3 months she was not on the chart in weight, at 3.5 months she was in the 1st percentile, and at 4 months she was in the 2nd percentile. She jumped 15 points in 2 months! In fact she was not even on the growth chart for height at 4 months and not only made it on the chart at this visit but is holding her own quite well there. To say that we are happy about her progress is an understatement. Six months ago we were told so many times how small Ella was for her gestational age and she was so slow to gain weight in the NICU it is pretty amazing to see Ella growing better than anyone could have expected.

We got the green light to start solids at the appointment but things are not going well on that front. We tried rice cereal three times with very poor results. She seems to be having terrible gas and starts screaming about 1/2 hour after she eats. It is pretty horrible. Saturday Shazam and I went out for our first date night and my parents watched Little E for us. Our wonderful date was cut short as Little E was hysterical and my parents could not get her to settle. We ran out of the restaurant leaving my Flirtini on the table and my surf and turf in a Styrofoam box. She was fine by the time we got home but all in all it was a solids fail. Same thing happened Sunday night. I tried giving her less cereal on Monday and it wasn't as bad but she still spent a good hour fussing and crying when I was trying to get her to bed. She is still pooping up a storm so she is not constipated. I think her little system is not ready for solids. Since she is only 4.5 months old adjusted we think we will just stop with the solids for a few weeks and try again when she is a little older.

Shazam wrote about Ella's lack of sleep at night. After sleeping through the night for the last month and a half Ella decided that the night before I went back to work she would stop sleeping. Argh great timing Ella! She has not slept through the night since then. I was hoping that with solids she would go back to sleeping through the night.

Since that didn't work out we are trying a new method tonight. Our early intervention case worker wants us to try and let Ella cry it out. I must say that I love EI. I think every first time parent should have a developmental psychologist come to your house once a week for the first year of parenting. She has been wonderful, she talks through issues that we are having, brings us articles to read, and is just someone to listen to us when we are stressed out. I know some of you will not agree with this method but at this point we are willing to try anything. We gave Ella a bath and her last bottle and put her in her pack n play. She has been falling asleep for about 30 minutes and then waking up for the last 90 minutes. I hope that she falls asleep soon for good. It is really hard to listen to your baby cry out for you and not go and comfort her. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Finally, school is going great. I have great kids and we are settling in to a nice groove already. While I hate leaving Ella every day I must say that I feel lucky to have a job that I really do love. Well Ella is quiet so I am going to take this opportunity to snuggle with my wife and watch Ame.rican Idol. I do have to note that the auditions are in Boston and are being held at our wedding venue! It is strange to be looking out at the view we had when we got married with Simon sitting there.