6 Month Check Up

Sophia recently had her 6 month check up. She weighs 15 pounds and 5 ounces, which puts her in the 45th percentile. I'm kind of surprised that she is below the average weight because she seems pretty chunky to me, but I think that is partly because Olivia was pretty tiny at this stage. Sophia is in the 50th percentile for height, and is 25 and 3/8 inches long. She did pretty well this time with all of the shots, however it seemed to take a few days before she was completely back to normal. Sophia is now easily rolling over both ways, but definitely prefers to be on her stomach. Trying to get a diaper on her has become very challenging because of this. She's had an awful diaper rash the past several days. She gotten several huge blisters. It looks terribly painful. I mix Balmex and Mylanta to use as a diaper cream, which works quite well. It's pretty runny and messy, especially when you're trying to put it on a squirming, determined baby that refuses to stay on her back. I've been trying to leave her diaper off a couple of times a day to help the rash. I expect her to pee every once in awhile, which is okay because it's not hard to clean up. But the other day while I left the room for about 3 minutes, she managed to poop, roll through it, and poop again and roll through it. It was a disgusting mess. Poop was everywhere! It was between Sophia's toes, all over the floor of course, on toys, on her clothes, and all over her legs. Olivia came in while I was cleaning it up, and decided to leave the room and shut the door on the way out. I thought that was a pretty smart move. I've been surprised at how much Sophia eats. Introducing her to solid food has been a breeze. She gobbles up everything we've fed her so far. Her menu choices currently includes carrots, peas, sweet potatoes, peaches, pears and apples. I'm happy to report that since we've started feeding her solid food twice a day, she's been sleeping 7-9 hours. Whoopee! That makes a mama happy. We seem to have gotten our delightful daughter,Olivia, back. The worst of the Terrible Twos have subsided for now, which is a huge relief. We've been experimenting with some Love and Logic strategies, which seems to have made a big difference. This is a parenting approach that focuses on empathy and consequences rather than anger and discipline. For example, we went out to eat a couple of weeks ago and Olivia started screaming and throwing ravioli. Rather than getting mad at her, I scooped her up and quietly said, "Oh how sad for you. Instead of getting to eat dinner in this fun restaurant, you have to go sit in your car seat. What a bummer!" I stood out in the rain while she was strapped in her car seat, and we waited for Yale to pay the bill and get our food boxed up. I made sure Olivia could see me so she wouldn't think that I'd abandoned her, but I also didn't want to sit in the car and listen to her scream. Instead of letting her know that we were disappointed that we didn't get to stay and enjoy our dinner, we focused on how sad it was for her to have to leave. We've haven't attempted to eat out again to know how well this worked, but this approach has made a big difference in other daily events, such as eating, getting dressed, putting on her coat, etc. Sure, she still has the occasional tantrum, but it's happening once every 3 days instead of 3 before 9 a.m. Olivia's funny word of the week: Ovendare (this is what she says for underwear)