Our not-so-little-anymore Mackenzie is SIX MONTHS! We have reached her twenty fourth week and she completes our lives. As she has grown, she’s making us learn all sorts of love and happiness we didn’t think existed.
So far, here is her tally:
Nappy Changes: 47
Sleep: 95 hours
Feeds: 90
This week, we bought her the book; The Good Dinosaur. She loves the book and would look at the pictures and touch all the pages and she let me read it to her in one sitting. I hope she’ll love the movie just as much as the book. It’s a real tear-jerker! I’ve been singing a lot of Lion King songs to her so we can watch the live action movie together when it’s released.
We’ve started Kenzie on solids again, 2-3 spoonfuls a day. She doesn’t want more than a spoonful (if we’re lucky) at a time and she will often gag and stick her tongue out and try spit the food out. So far she is hating vegetables and apple but she loves chippies, melon, watermelon, papaya, mango, biscuits and yoghurt. She is such a messy eater! We’ve discovered that she eats more if she is able to get her hands on it but since her gag reflexes are in full swing as she is still learning to swallow thicker substances, we’re limiting it to the feeder or small pieces of bread. I freaked out when she bit a piece of watermelon off and had to dig into her mouth to get it out!
We started this week off with a couple of broken sleeps and a very needy and clingy baby. Kenzie refused to be put down unless you were near her and she was so picky with who she wanted to be with (it needed to be someone familiar to her or she wasn’t having any of it). The only thing that seemed to be calming her down this past week are nursery rhymes. Then as we were wondering what was wrong with her, we get a reminder on our Wonder Weeks App that Kenzie is entering Leap 5. It looks like she entered Leap 5 early as she was so unsettled before bed and would wake once for 5 minutes at night (which I should really be thankful for but she usually sleeps through without a peep!). I have not had this much broken sleep since she was born and it’s really taking it’s toll on me as she still only catnaps during the day for 30 minutes at a time. The hour long catnaps are once in a blue moon! Not even a coffee was able to keep me up. I am too scared to fall asleep when she sleeps until she is deep asleep. I usually end up finally falling asleep only to wake when she was a tad bit unsettled and that means I’m spending another so and so minutes trying to get back to sleep again. Some nights she will cry out loud while still sleeping. We think she is having nightmares and only settles when we hold her. She’s still sleeping and doesn’t open her eyes but she’s definitely aware of her surroundings. They say Leap 4 was supposed to be the hardest but Leap 5 has definitely been the hardest for us thus far.
Kenzie has been practing her vocal chord muscles this week by screaming, mumbling, humming, spitting and screeching more often. I feel like it helps her when she is teething as she makes the most noises when she is biting on something. Every day I’m trying to get her to say “Mommy” or “Daddy” and we’re definitely far from it.
We’re finding it a lot easier to get her giggling! It’s still a challenge but our serious baby is becoming less and less serious every week.
We visited a church together this week as we learned my Aunty was placed in hospital for a week. She’s the one that helped me raise Kenzie for a couple of months and someone I will make sure Kenzie will forever remember her and how much she helped us in the early stages of parenthood. We’ll have her test results back in a week and hoping for good news.
Sydney weather has finally given us a chance to go on our afternoon strolls. She loves being outside and touching leaves and grass and looking at the trees. In reality, she’s just happy being outside of the house to explore. She has started to stand and I feel like she will skip the crawling phase altogether. I fear that her being a “tad” bit overweight is affecting her hit that milestone.
Kenzie is due for her 6 months immunisations in a couple of weeks time and I still fear for her being jabbed with such big needles. I also fear for what her weight will be when the doctor measures her development. I really do think I produce extremely fatty milk with a gross amount of growth hormones. Speaking of milk, thanks to Human Milk 4 Human Babies, I found a momma of an 8 month old needing some breastmilk for her little one. I managed to donate 100 bags of breastmilk and my parents are overjoyed they have space in their freezer again. It’s filling up fast again as I’m still pumping excess milk daily!