Sydney's 6 month check up (2.08 years and 6 month)

Sydney went to the doctor for her 6 month check up.  She weighs almost 15 pounds.  She is in the 25th percentile for weight.  She is much smaller than Austin was.  Austin was 15 pounds at 2.5 months.  In fact Sydney is able to wear Austin's "My First St. Patrick's Day" clothes this month (despite being 5 months older than Austin was).  It works out great.  It is so funny.

The doctor said everything looks good.  She is growing well on her growth curve.  She is almost crawling.  She can get up on her hands and knees.  She likes to move backwards.  She rolls all over the place.  If she wants something she will find a way to get it.  She is not babbling yet though.  She will laugh and coo but no babbling yet.  Hopefully that will come soon.

Sydney is not a big fan of eating.  We have tried giving her rice cereal on Valentine's Day.  She did not care for it.  We have also tried giving her bananas and pears.  Still not a fan yet either.  The doctor said that the muscles that are used to swallow somethings need more time to develop and she may not be ready yet.  He said don't force it.  She will get there.  So we have her join us every night for dinner at the table and try and little bit.  We do a happy song and dance every time she takes a bite.  Austin gets excited about it too.  Austin also buckles Sydney in her chair every night.  He enjoys doing that.  It's funny because he says "Watch your fingers sister" as he does it.  Austin is a great helper.

We have also started to give Sydney formula.  My goal was to make it to 6 months and I did that.  But because of the cruise I am going to continue to breast feed a little bit longer.  I want to be done pumping though.  I hope to continue to nurse in the mornings and evenings but daytime feeding will be formula.  Sydney is not a fan of formula either.  My mom tried it the first time and it did not go well.  She screamed.  Daycare has been giving her 1/2 and 1/2 bottles and that went a little better.  Brian tried all formula too and again it did not go well either.  Hopefully she will learn to like it soon.

Austin is saying more and more sentences.  It is so awesome that he can talk and tell exactly what he wants.  There are less tantrums this way.  He was just trying to open his milk cup and he did it himself and he said "Austin opened it".

Austin kind of knows that we are going on a cruise.  I have Austin telling everyone "Big Boat 2 weeks".  This weekend I need to change it to "Big Boat 1 week".  I would love to know what he thinks it is.  Brian let him watch a video of a cruise ship on the kindle and Austin ended up clicking on another video which was an episode of Undercover Boss where the CEO was doing work undercover on a cruise ship.  They were doing lots of manual labor and Austin liked the tools.  If you ask him what's he's going to do on the boat, he says "Tools", so he thinks we got him a job working there (and is excited about that).  I hope that we all have fun on vacation and everyone is healthy.  I have been working on packing this week.  I have never started packing so early but packing for 4 is a lot of work.  Plus I don't want to forget anything important.

Sydney got her passport already.  Like with Austin, we did a photo shoot to commemorate her first big trip.  Some of the photos are posted here.  Brian took these at home.  We temporarily bought a special pink suitcase for it (and then returned it hours later because it was too small to be useful for anything else).  The weather was nice too earlier in March, so Brian did a photo shoot outside too.  He shot photos for a wedding announcement for someone, so he bought a special portrait lens and he's been using it to get some great pictures of the kids.

It's going to be a fun and busy week ahead.  We are looking forward to it.