Faith at nearly 6 months

Finally, both Faith and I are on the road to recovery after being down with both viral and bacterial infections for nearly 2 weeks. The flipside to bringing Faith out often -- largely weekends -- invariably means that she's more susceptible to bugs and viruses floating around in the atmosphere.

Still, life has to go on. Yes, our lifestyle has changed some to adapt to having a little one. Yet, we are reluctant to coddle and protect our little one too much. That's not to say that we would embrace the other end of the spectrum and bring her out everyday, for long stretches at a time. That would be silly and tempting fate. But we hope to find a good balance of maintaining our previous lifestyle where weekends are meant to catch up with families and friends, while at the same time, allowing some down time for Faith to calm down and catch up on her short power naps.

In another 2 days time, Faith would reach her full 6 months milestone. The last one month has seen significant developments for my little baby. She's started on solids and has experimented with a few different types of food. She's definitely more aware and curious of her surroundings, objects and people -- stretching and straining to grab everything within sight and reach of her little busy fingers. She's also developing well physically in terms of motor skills. Slowly but certainly, she's getting playful and naughtier by the day.

On food, Faith still likes her food well pureed or strained -- no lumpy puree, please. She's tried store-bought rice cereals, brown rice, butternut squash, Japanese pumpkin, sweet potatoes, avocados and pears. Of these, she loves rice cereals, brown rice and butternut squash best. I think its becos they are fragrant. She isn't too fanatical about avocado (I'm being optimistic here). She's neutral about sweet potatoes, Japanese pumpkins and pears, provided that they are well pureed. However, she tends to poop all her sweet potatoes, causing some minor alarm for me until the paedi said that "carrots and peas poops" are common for kids up till 3 years of age. Still, it is rather unnerving that she poops sweet potatoes in all its entirety. There's absolutely no smell in her poop and it continues for as long as I feed her sweet potatoes.

Her finger grasping skill is improving. While she rakes most of the objects towards her, she's generally able to grasp pretty much everything within sight. She has a particular fetish for grabbing hairs and yanking on them. I don't know why, but all babies seem to go through that phase *shrug*. So, those of you with long hair, be forewarned. In the mornings when she wakes and if Louis and I do not turn and greet her, she would pawed at us until we pry our eyes open and smile at her. To which, she would coo a little and smile at us.

Flipping... hmmm... she's getting rather good at it. She started only being able to flip on her left side while on her back. Then, she graduated to learning to flip from her back to front and front to back. After which, she accelerated to learn to flip on her right side, back-front-front-back. Now, she's just flipping all over the place and no mattress nor a king-sized bed seems big enough for her flipping gymnastics.

And it amazes me that once children learnt a skill, they subconsciously continue to "practise" it. For the last few nights, she decides to flip onto her stomach halfway through the night to sleep. When I wake up noticing her on her stomach, I would flipped her back on her back again. You can bet your last dollar that soon after, she flops back again on her tummy. All the books I have read warned against letting infants sleep on their tummy, but I'm wondering that now she's more dexterous, is it still as dangerous that they might on occasions sleep on their tummy? Faith seems to know to flip her head to the side, so that she can breathe even in sleep.

Where she used to be contented and happy when we pull her gently upright into a sitting position, now, she strains to stand up. And when you let her, she happily grins and starts stamping her little feet. Slowly, I'm training her to put her hands out in front of her while in a sitting position so that she can balance herself all on her own. Well... it lasts only about a few seconds before she topples over. Hahaha... fret not! We only do it when she's on the bed.

And the vocal chords! Geez! Faith must be enormously fascinated at discovering the different range of vocals she has. Unfortunately, she's decided that her favourite is a high pitch little scream (or maybe its a screech?). And so, my little one now screams a lot for the past week. No particular reason for her screaming. She screams when she's lying down, when she's bored, when she's happy. In fact, she seems to think that the only way to communicate with her parents and grandma these days. It amuses us in the beginning but when she screams incessantly for a couple of minutes each time throughout the day, it gets dreary and not so amusing anymore.

Louis, however, thinks otherwise. He keeps asking me when Faith will start to be able to talk and he's sure looking forward to that day. Me? Faith's definitely more fun and bubbly now to play with, conversely, needing a lot more attention than before. I'm at times tearing my hair out or laughing at her antics. Still, I mostly try to remind myself to enjoy her every phases of growth. Speaking of which, I shall leave you with an updated collage of Faith's growth over the months :)