We don't take her back to the doctor until next Friday for some more shots, so I'm not sure her exact measurements but I would estimate that she is about 14 lbs now. She can still fit into some of her 0-3 month clothes, most of her 3-6 month clothes, and now we've started putting her in some 6 month outfits too, so she's got a ton of options for clothes!! :)
We started using cloth diapers a couple of weeks ago with regularity when I was home with Elliana for several days during her bout with her first cold. Poor thing. It took her a good week to recover from the cold, and now, not even 3 weeks later, she's got another one! This is the downside to having to put her in daycare. I am not really looking forward to the flu season and a sick baby. At least it is building up her immune system. I am thankful for the immunity and antibodies she gets from my milk, so at least that should keep her healthier than if we weren't nursing. Anyway, cloth diapers are going fairly well. She tends to have blowouts on a regular basis at the ELC but not at home, but I am not sure if that's because we notice her dirty diapers sooner since we are only taking care of one child. :) That's a perk of having so many clothes, since she changes outfits about 2 or 3 times a day at school! We are using Flip diaper covers and Cloth-eeze birdseye flatweave diapers folded as inserts. It is a pretty good system, thanks to my friend and former co-worker Bonnie who did the research last year and told me about what she did and how it worked well with our setup here in Korea (no dryer--line drying laundry). :) We just do diaper laundry every 2 days or so and it hasn't been too difficult. I am enjoying saving the money we would spend on diapers and feeling like I am helping out the environment by not filling up so many landfills. We are still using disposables at night, though, since it's easier to change her quickly with those when she semi-wakes up to eat in the middle of the night.
Today also marks 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding for Elliana. I feel very blessed that we have made it to this milestone. I must say that at the beginning of our journey I didn't know if we would make it this far...we had what seemed like more than our fair share of struggles (man it can be hard to do something so natural!) and it took a while to get things completely sorted, including me having emergency surgery when Elliana was 11 wks old, on an abscess I developed after an infection, as soon as we got to San Diego in June. Thankfully, I had some great help from my doula/lactation consultant at the beginning, as well as friends and an online BF support group since which has really helped us tremendously. Elliana hasn't had any food besides milk yet and I am in no rush to give her solid foods. However, we will probably be trying some things out in the next few weeks...of course we'll post when we do that! We have no plans to stop nursing any time soon...my next goal is to make it to a year and then we'll see from there. I strongly believe in the benefits of human milk for human babies (we're even donating extra milk to a friend who adopted her son this summer and wants to feed him as much bm as she can) and don't see any reason to quit. The difficulties seem to be past us now, and that is such a relief.
Elliana still loves to chew/suck on her fingers and has those in her mouth most of the time. Still no teeth yet, but maybe they will be coming soon? Not sure. Her habits haven't really changed much so we really can't tell.
She's slowly getting hair back on her head...it's pretty fine right now and we can't tell if it's red or brown, but it's pretty light. I had a Korean grandma in the doctors' office the other day who was talking to me and kept pointing out all sorts of babies in the waiting room and how they all had more hair than Elliana. haha We put her in headbands often, thanks to Auntie Amber who has made us so many, along with several that we bought this summer. Everyone wonders what went wrong on mornings that she's not wearing one!! :)
We got another typhoon today, Sanba, so school got out early and we had LOTS of rain! Just perfect for our little Raindrop. It was raining on the night she was born and raining on her 6 month birthday!
I think that's about it for now. She did sort of do a crawling maneuver today, but when I tried to get it on video she wouldn't do it again, so I have no evidence. :) Now for the photos. I didn't have a chance to print out a 6 for six months, so instead we put her in her Minnie Mouse onesie that her Uncle Andy and Aunt Serena brought her from Disneyland. "She is adorable!" to quote her Daddy.
Here are a few photos from this morning before going to school. She's got a little cold again so her eye's a bit watery.
And here are our photos from this evening. :) I can never narrow them down well. You can see how much she moves these days! She's like a little gymnast!!
Imagine all that movement while trying to change a diaper. haha It's getting challenging.
And here's our big girl sitting up with her bunny.
Did I mention she drools constantly? We have to send her with multiple bibs each day to the ELC because she drenches her outfits.
Rolling around with her bunny.
I love this one.
I'm sure the next thing we'll be posting is videos of her crawling. :) Stay tuned...
