Half a year!

Today, it’s Tomoe’s half year birthday!  6 months ago, she was born!  It’s been a fast 6 months, but it also feels like she’s always been here.  I can’t imagine life without her.

In the past 6 months, she’s gone from a small newborn who couldn’t do much other than feed, cry and sleep, to a baby who is eating baby food, making use of her arms and legs to move around a little bit, playing with toys, smiling, laughing, and even holding herself up on her feet.  She’s come a long way, but still a lot more exciting changes ahead!

Big strides at almost 6 months

Tomoe has shown some amazing things recently.  I’m actually utterly enthralled at what she’s been able to do.  She’s so far ahead in some skills.  Right now, she’s sleeping, but earlier, she did everything that’s been amazing me lately.  I’ll get to that soon.

I’m sleepy.

Tomoe has shown the ability to sit upright while using her hands to hold on to things to balance.  But she usually just puts her hands on the floor and leans forward.  She can’t balance yet.  But she’s been able to do something else.  Her first step towards crawling!  She’s shown us that she can get on her hands and knees, and she does it with so much ease now.  She frequently rocks forward and backward, like she’s trying to figure out how to crawl.  She can’t do that yet, but she can turn herself around with her hands.

Look! I can almost crawl!

Not only that, she’s been arching her whole body with her hands and feet only on the floor.  She did that for the first time in the past week.  She’s getting strong arms, legs and back.

Look! No hands!

In the above picture, she’s actually fallen asleep while drinking.  However, she can now hold the bottle herself, and she will take it out of her mouth, and when she wants it again, accurately put the nipple back in her mouth.  Her coordination isn’t perfect, but she’s doing incredibly well!

On that topic, she’s able to reach for and grasp many objects.  She’s been playing with toys a lot these days, including shaking them to make noise.  She’s extremely curious, and she wants to touch everything.  She’ll hold things with two hands or just one hand, and she enjoys feeling things and seeing what kind of sounds they make if she scratches them.

I’m so sleepy.

On Friday, she got her DTP (Diphtheria, Tetanus and Pertussis) vaccination done, and she was so good!  No crying at all.  Not one complaint.  I don’t think she even noticed!

Her social skills are quite good now.  She interacts with us a lot, and now that she understands her name, she looks when she’s called.  She’ll also interact with other babies.  Her vocalizations are becoming more varied with lots of single syllable sounds and some rather sudden bark-like sounds, like “HAH!”

She’s been trying more and more kinds of solid food lately, too.  She’s enjoyed spinach, pumpkin, sweet potato, and more.  She tried apple for the first time and gave us a hilarious look on her face.  Too sour! She gave the same response for yoghurt.

But I think the biggest thing is that her legs are becoming so strong, and her refusal to sit down have resulted in her always wanting to stand up, with support, of course.  But she’s getting so good at it, she can push herself up from a sitting position to stand up!

Look everyone! I can stand!

She not even 6 months old, and she can stand.  She’s always surprising us!

The good and the bad

The past two weeks have been incredibly eventful.  Tomoe’s been becoming increasingly mobile.  While she isn’t crawling yet, and probably won’t be for at least 2 or 3 months, she is slowly moving herself around on the floor, including making a full 360 over about 5 minutes.  Not only is she doing pushups very well, but she’s been raising her bum in the air while on her knees.

What a fascinating red thing.

Let’s do a pushup!

And now bum up!

Tomoe’s been reaching for toys and other objects a lot these days.  When she sees something she wants, she’ll try to reach for it.  She’s also been manipulating things with both of her hands, and is getting better at controlling them with her hands.  She’s now able to hold her bottle with her hands, but she doesn’t have a great amount of control.  She has certain toys that she really enjoys playing with, including a Shimajiro toy (it’s a tiger) and a musical Winnie the Pooh.  She really likes reflective surfaces, and she enjoys making lots of noise with her play mat.  There’s a butterfly with a noisy plastic inside that she’ll play with for a long time.

She’s also started eating solid food daily.  Mainly, she’s been eating okayu, which is made of rice.  She seems to love it!

She’s still unable to sit unsupported, but she does use her hands to hold herself up.  She’s becoming more upright while sitting, as well.  However, she hasn’t been able to put herself in the sitting position yet.

She’s been very vocal as usual, and her sounds are becoming more varied.  She can pronounce all the main vowel sounds, as well as the letters m, b, n, w, and ng.

One really big milestone is that she’s recognising her name now.  When we say her name, she’ll look at us.  It’s nice to know she understands it!

This post is called the good and the bad for a reason.  Now for the bad part.  Last week, Tomoe developed a fever.  However, this is completely normal, and it has to do with teething.  But due to this, she had 3 somewhat sleepless nights.  It was pretty sleepless for my wife and I.  She cried most of the time and had a temperature of 38 degrees.  It wasn’t a bad fever, but enough to make her uncomfortable.

Even though she had a fever, she still played.

After her fever, she developed a bit of a rash, with lots of red spots on her skin.  This is also quite normal, caused by the fever.  Last Friday, she slept a lot!  She could finally sleep without feeling sick.

What a great position to sleep in.

But on Friday night, she started getting itchy.  She had a bright red rash on the back of her neck and behind her ears.  She kept trying to scratch it furiously.  That night, she had a hard time sleeping yet again.  She thrashed about in bed, because she couldn’t scratch the back of her neck.  It was driving her crazy.  We didn’t get a good night’s sleep again.  The next day, her rash almost completely cleared up.  We figure it was from sweat.

Since then, she’s been pretty normal.  Her usual cheerful self!

She can’t seem to hold still for a good picture. There’s the butterfly she likes to the left.

Hello!