Little EC has made it to the half-year mark. She’s eating solid foods, kind of sitting up, twirling around on her abdomen and making crawling-like motions with her arms and legs. She just started to babble a little a couple days ago. In most respects, she seems to be about a month ahead of the standard “growing up” progression discussed in the books.

She’s been sick once, just a couple days ago (with some mild stomach bug that didn’t bother her much but gave her the runs). She’ll probably get sick more coming up because she’s grabbing everything and putting it in her mouth…except for food, which she grabs and throws to the floor. No doubt, if given the opportunity, she would grab said food from the floor and then put it in her mouth. It’s called “seasoning to taste”.

She is amazingly drawn to smartphones. We don’t let her play with them but she does see us using them and she probably infers that nothing is more interesting than whatever is going on there. If the “device” is in sight, she has her eyes on it. The other day, she left all her toys and spun around on her tummy to where it was sitting on the floor, and she gave herself a pre-crawling little push in an effort to get it. I’ve given her an old dead phone to play with before, and she’s equally entranced.

Yesterday she sat up indefinitely. It was because she was entranced by the iPhone as we tried to call the grandparents. She could hear it ring, could see herself on it, and wouldn’t move a muscle while it was going on. Only when I moved the phone away (no answer) did she loosen up and fall over.

She also sees us watching TV sometimes. We don’t let her watch it, but if we have five minutes left of a show when she wakes up from her nap we’ll put her in the walker and face her toward us while we finish up. She’s getting better at turning around, though, so that strategy will only last a bit longer. When she was younger we could just lie her down on the couch, but it’s been forever since that worked. Now, if we put her sitting up on the couch facing a blank TV, she’ll just stare at it…apparently wanting to emulate us. I suppose at some point she’ll realize that it’s not actually that fun. Maybe her parents will realize the same thing too 😉

She has been on a fantastic daily schedule. Wake up at 7. Eat. Play for an hour. Nap. Play for awhile. Eat at 11/12. Nap. Play for awhile. Eat around 3. Play, nap. Eat around 6. Bedtime at 7. Get woken up for eating around 10. Sleep until 7. Her naps are anything from 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on how she feels that day, and whether or not I leave her to “bore herself” back to sleep. She’s been on this schedule for two months, about. It’s gotten very predictable.

She always wakes up with a big smile. She is a very happy baby in general, almost never crying unless something is wrong. She does get frustrated that she can’t crawl and get everything she wants. In the next month, that will change forever.

What great fun this is.