This week marked a big milestone for Arabella- six months! She is growing fast at 27 inches (89.68 percentile) and 20.94 pounds (98.43 percentile). She is also making great strides in her development.
On Tuesday- I walked into kids club at the gym to find her sitting up in Bumbo seat. I’m told that prior to the bottle she was happily watching the big kids and pretending to be one herself.
On Wednesday we had lunch at Yolk with Felix, who was in town for the week. It’s kind of ironic that I see him more now that he doesn’t live in my city- but I’m not complaining. Time with good friends is always a welcome treat.
Six months means that Arabella is definitely teething. Poor baby is chewing on everything. We have been trying to get her interested in her chilled teething ring, but she seems to be more into her teething biscuits— and also chewing on our fingers.
Six months also marks the goal I set for myself for breast feeding/pumping. I had initially said four months (at back to work time), but as it worked out my supply didn’t dwindle right away so I decided to push for the six month mark. The whole breast feeding topic could be a post of its own, so I’ll just say this: I’m very happy to have made it six months— and even happier to be done. Arabella never showed much of a preference on formula versus breast milk. And honestly, she’s so excited about real foods these days, I don’t think she’s going to miss breast milk in the slightest.
We took Arabella’s six month photos this week. Baxter of course didn’t want to be left out and insisted on having his photo taken too. He also tried to get between Jarmon and Arabella when they were playing airplane on the couch. It was kind of adorable.
Halloween costumes could also be a post of their own, but bottom line— Arabella is dressing up as a pumpkin for her first Halloween. We ordered three costumes— the pumpkin, a pig and a bunny— but ultimately the traditional pumpkin won out. We ordered a pumpkin costume for Baxter too but it was way too small. We took a photo before packing it back up to return. Boo!
On Saturday, we went to Goebbert’s pumpkin patch in South Barrington. There is a ton to do there, but we went for two reasons: cider/donuts and pumpkin photos. Arabella was the only kid there in costume but she didn’t know the difference— and we got some adorable photos of her next to the giant award winning pumpkins (cue the long list of annoying pumpkin puns!). We also got some ridiculous caramel apple cider with whipped cream and sprinkles and glazed apple cider donuts. It was all delicious. Unfortunately, it started to rain as we were finishing our cider and even though no one else seemed to mind— we decided that the precipitation was our family’s cue to go. We are not outdoorsy people, but we took our kid to a suburban pumpkin farm— and by golly, we have cute fall photos to prove it!
On the way home from the pumpkin farm we stopped at Target. At one point I turned around to find Arabella holding a new toy. She obviously hadn’t picked it up herself so I asked Jarmon where it came from. He said that he was looking at it and she reached for it, so he thought she wanted it. And that folks, is how easy it’s going to be for Arabella to get things- “She looked like she wanted it!” She’s a lucky kid. (And she loves the new toy.)
Trina Orlando 