Me and my girl

It's hard to believe my little girl is about to turn six months. This second half of the year has been crazy, in some ways it has been the most stressful time of my life, but in other ways it has been the best.

And this little one, this beautiful little baby, has been just amazing. I've loved watching her blossom. She's quite a little character already, she smiled early (just under 3 weeks), has been sitting up for a couple of weeks already and now wants to stand up. She reaches out and grabs at everything near her, and if you take anything off her she has quite a temper, she's a determined little thing. 

Right now her favourite things are playing peekaboo, this little piggy and bashing rattles around. I think her favourite thing of all though is her big brother. She laughs hysterically at everything he does, she lights up when she sees him. 

She smiles so easily. Ok she doesn't like being handed to anyone else, but from my arms she's very smiley, always catching the eye of strangers and charming them with a bashful smile. She can be shy though, nestling into me for reassurance if there are too many people, sometimes crying if she gets overwhelmed. 

She's my little sidekick, I love putting her in the sling and heading out together, talking to her as we walk, singing to her, rubbing noses. We get around all over the place, she's rarely any trouble now. She loves music, loves it when we dance together. Randomly she seems to like Taylor Swift.

Sleep. Well she'll still only sleep on me. We co-sleep and it works. I've gone from being woken up every hour to now only half waking up to help her latch on then quickly drifting back. It works for us. It was killing me. The last six months are something of a blur.

Naps are rubbish too, half hour naps four times a day. We're working on it.

She's been 100% breastfed. She won't even entertain the idea of a bottle right now, which is both wonderful and also occasionally overwhelming. But next up we have solids starting in the next few days, and so a new chapter begins.

She is wonderful, absolutely wonderful.