The Lieu Crew: Six Months!

We celebrated Samantha's half birthday with warm weather, food off the grill, and friends. How fun to have your half birthday on 4th of July! Hopefully next week we can tell her that she gets fireworks for her half birthday. Samantha continues to be a joy, and Andrew and I feel luckier all the time to get to spend our days with this little girl. Dr. Marshall says she's growing and developing just as she should. She continues to weigh in at the 25th percentile (14 lbs 8 oz) and is about 70th percentile for length (26 1/4 inches). She still had to get three shots and an oral vaccine, but at least it was one less than last time!

Can't believe I'm six months old!

Our patriotic family :)

Samantha started sitting up my balancing on her hands this past month (tripod style), but right around her 6 month birthday she started to be able to lift up her hans for a few minutes.

This month her hand was ALWAYS in her mouth!

...or a bear, or a blanket, or her clothes, or our clothes, etc. Now if only she wanted to put real people food in her mouth!

Samantha loves standing. She always wants to push up on her legs now. In the last month her exersaucer has become her favorite way to pass the time.

She smiles all the time now, and we can get her to giggle if she's in a good mood quite often. Her smiles and giggles are so addicting. The surest way to make her smile these days is to put her into the stroller and let her roll down the driveway towards us. She loves that!

Samantha still loves being sung to and talked to. She's adding her own voice to the mix quite often now- making a lot of vowel sounds and sometimes making little screaming/shrieking noises just to hear her own voice.

Just after her five month birthday Samantha started rolling from back to tummy- she can do it both right and left now. The only thing is that she still can't seem to purposefully roll from tummy to back, which is supposed to be the easier direction to go. What a silly girl! At first it upset her that she kept ending up on her tummy. Now she's getting more used to it. She still decides she doesn't like to be on her stomach after a few minutes, but in the meantime she's decided that she can play with toys and grab things while she's on her stomach.

And tummy sleeping has revolutionized naps! Now Samantha is a much better crib napper than a car seat napper. She'll take two 1-2 hour naps in her crib each day (almost always on her stomach), and she often sleeps from 8 or 8:30 at night to between 5 and 6 in the morning. Makes me wish that we could have always put her to sleep on her stomach like our parents did with us!

Samantha has still been wearing Carters 6 month clothes this past month, but they are starting to feel a little tight and on her half birthday I put her in her first 6-9 month outfit.