Eleanor, my 6 month old

I figured it was about time for an Eleanor post. I am so tragically behind on posting pictures of her, I think I'm just going to scrap the whole weekly post thing and just move forward. Maybe someday I'll get around to the "missing weeks" and get them edited and posted, but don't hold your breath.....you might expire before that happens. These pictures work well for today because basically Eleanor is the only one of my children who is currently allowing me to take her picture. Maddie and Charlotte are fed up with me practicing with my new camera on them and although I can still get shots of them, most of them are turning out like this:


because they don't want to have anything to do with holding still while I change my settings around. Oh well......my sweet baby Eleanor is a great subject and there is nothing I enjoy more than capturing her lovely chunk on film (so to speak).

I am realizing that I don't blog much about little Ellie. I write about her a lot on facebook, but I haven't actually taken the time to sit down and type an update. I'm sure it has something to do with my desire to get caught up on her weekly pictures. Anyway.

The baby is doing well! She is 6 months old as of today and HUGE. A whopping 19 pounds 3 ounces. The funny thing is that although that weight seems really big, it is totally on line with the older girls weights at the same age. We just make roley poley chubby babies. They are my favorite though, so its totally good. Eleanor still breastfeeds and has yet to take a bottle of milk. She will take water (with a splash of apple juice) but since I am not a fan of pumping and thus far bottle feeding has not been a necessity, we just don't press the issue. I started making her baby food a couple weeks ago because she nearly ate my hand off when I gave her a couple bites of my yam one night at dinner. So far she has had yams and pears. I don't feed her solids everyday and we aren't on any type of schedule with the food.....if she seems hungry I might offer her something or if she's particularly fussy, generally some baby food will help her forget about whatever she was fussing about.

Eleanor rolls over and has recently started pushing herself around the floor a little bit. I'll put her on the activity mat on her back and 5 minutes later she will be on her belly and no longer on the mat. No getting up on her knees or anything like that yet, which is fine by me. I like when babies stay generally right where I put them. Crawling & walking opens up a can of worms that I'm not yet ready for. It seems that we have been hit pretty constantly this fall/winter with cold viruses which make it hard for Ellie to breathe and escalate the cranktastic behavior, but otherwise she is a very happy and easily entertained baby. We've also thought that the teething process started about a month ago based on some extra crank, but so far no teeth. I actually looked in the older girls baby books today and Maddie got her first tooth at 5 months, Charlotte at 6 months and 4 days......I doubt Eleanor will sprout a tooth in the next 4 days, thus she will be my oldest, toothless baby. I'm not really looking forward to her having sharp little biters in her mouth, so the late teething is fine by me!

Sleep is hit or miss with this child. She has been sleeping through the night since around 2 1/2 months and only really needs attention when her paci falls out and she needs it put back in. We put her to bed at 7:00, I go in and feed her before I go to bed (usually around 11:00) and then she usually sleeps until sometime between 7:00-8:00. We are blessed in this capacity because the older girls took longer to get to this point. Naps are a different story. Before we went to CA in February Eleanor would nap 2-3 times a day and for hours at a time. When we got back to NC from our vacation something changed and she started fighting naps, only sleeping for 30-40 minutes at a time and basically dropped her late afternoon nap. Now we're somewhere between those 2 extremes. Some days she is a great napper and some days its a struggle. But I've said it before and I'll say it again......I would so much rather my babies sleep all night than take good daytime naps. It is impossible for me to nap during the day anyway, so a full nights sleep is a better deal.

I love this girl so much! I adore the way she growls when she's trying to fall asleep, I love how she rakes her fingers over me while she is nursing and how her eyes always need to find mine when she is in a new situation or being held by someone else. Eleanor is a sweet, cuddly and extremely kissable baby and 99% of the time I can not get enough of her love!