Stacer Days: Autumn at Six Months!

Our sweet angel turned six months this past weekend. She is so much fun and steals all of our hearts, daily, as we vie for her attention. It's pretty ridiculous how "spoiled" she already is. She wakes up happy. She has the most precious button nose and though she is starting to lose some chub, there is still plenty to love.

The boys call this "sky diving."

She's even got Daddy wrapped up... or here, it seems, the reverse is true.

She weighs just shy of twenty-two pounds and wears clothes sized 18 month. It is a little difficult at this point because most 18-24 month old clothes are designed around the assumption that those kids wearing them will be upright and walking. There's a shortage of practical 18-24 month clothing for diaper-wearing, gigantic babies with big legs and lots of rolls, so she wears a lot of onesies :)

Her latest 18-24 month old onesie.

Her big brothers adore her and so often want to do the same things they see Alan and me doing with her (like carrying her around in a mom-fashion, or snuggling). Their mere presence makes her smile and sometimes giggle with no effort at all. They are such good helpers like "baby sitting" while I'm in the shower or tending to her in the car. She really does have it made... two big brothers to love and protect her. Although Aaron did ask me the other day, "When will Autumn be old enough to wrestle with us?" I had to clear a few things up.

(These PJs are 18 month - but you'll see the legs are a little bit too long)

She loves the Jumperoo, walks, taking naps in my front-pack, id-attacking toys with her mouth, afternoon giggle fests (see video below), and motor-boating/spitting with her lips. She is also a bit of a "couch potato," as we call it - because (just like her brother Aaron was) she is somewhat obsessed with screens of any size and will often contort her body in order to find one.

Strangers are hit and miss - some make her smile within seconds of greeting, and others send her to a dark and scary place causing big bottom lips and silent crying. I rolled her stroller into the bathroom at a park the other day and while I stepped out of her sight to wash my hands I spoke briefly to a woman there in the bathroom. I think Autumn thought I, along with all her creamy booby juice, was gone forever and this new strange voice was all she had because when I returned (thirty seconds later) she was in full fat-bottom-lip, dripping real tears, and silent crying. It was horrible.

Which brings me to the lip. There's something about her bottom lip that does bad, bad things to me. I can't handle it - not even for a few seconds. I'm not sure if it's because she's a precious little girl and not a rough and tough boy? Or we have some special estrogen-connection...? Or maybe because her face is set up for the most perfect and sad bottom lip I've yet seen. She usually throws out a couple of small flip lips as a warning of what's to come and then the eyes well up and out comes the big gun. It gets me, deep.

Fat bottom lips usually come with stranger danger or intense-end of the world-style hunger. You know, the kind of hunger where you wake up from a warm nap in your soft crib and it's about nine minutes out from your "normal" feeding time, but you don't think you'll make it. You can feel the fat rolls on your legs getting thinner. Then, as if to rub salt in an open wound, you get passed off to Daddy, who for all his charms and loveliness, does not have booby juice.... so you throw up a warning lip. I'll give them twenty seconds to produce the booby or else...

One Alan snapped before I could get to her. I can barely look at a photo of this.

She's also been honing her fake cry. I remember this tactic with the boys. It's something along the lines of irritated, slightly hungry, think you may be left in the room alone, crying. The key difference here is that there are no tears, just noise. I can see right through this one and she knows it already. If I say something to her she immediately stops and sometimes even smiles at me as if to acknowledge that she's been caught.

Autumn likes to make noise while eating. It used to be slurping-eating related noises, now she makes loud sighing noises and sometimes little, but dramatic squeals. She can also get really loud when burping after her meal. Some of her louder meals and burps happen in quiet places like at Bible Study on Wednesdays. Ask Aunt Jenny, she can barely hold it together.

One of her many hand-me-downs. Still applies, for the most part.

If she's had good naps and feedings, Autumn will, about once or twice a day, burst into these giggle sessions that do not stop until she runs out of energy. Her laughing is contagious and she will get to the point where anything that I say or do makes her giggle. Sometimes she discovers new noises in the middle of her outbursts and she's scared for just a moment, but quickly recovers and starts up again. Usually she won't do it if the camera is on, but she finally let me video her...