Darcy's 5 month birthday

Darcy celebrated her 5-month birthday yesterday. She is growing up so fast. I took her to the baby health centre to be weighed ... she is now a whopping 6.3kgs, which is 1.6kgs bigger than when she was born. We started solids two weeks ago, a little earlier than planned, because of her failure to thrive diagnosis. She thinks rice cereal is gross, but apple puree and prunes are the best!

She is rolling front-to-back and back-to-front, but not too often ... just often enough to remind us that she knows how to do it yet. She likes to sit up supported in a breastfeeding pillow, and has just started grabbing both feet with her hands and trying her best to chew on her toes. She is improving at tummy-time and will now tolerate it for about 2 minutes.

She is still breastfeeding beautifully, and she has a strong preference for 'rightie' over 'leftie'. When times are desperate, she'll accept breastmilk in a bottle, but she normally makes it known that she is not to happy with this state of affairs. I'm not sure what will happen next month when I'm going to an occupational therapy conference for two whole days. Gareth will probably bring her in for a lunchtime feed, so hopefully she's survive morning and afternoon tea without me.

She's still waking 2-3 times a night for feeds, although last week it was closer to 5-6 times a night. It nearly killed me. Like her older brother, she isn't much of a day sleeper, having 4-5 mini-catnaps of about 15 mins each througout the day. So far, I haven't figured any way to resettle her after she wakes up, so we're stuck with this for the time being.

She absolutely adores Jambin and follows him with her eyes all around the room. If she's whinging, Jambin will sing to her and she will settle instantly. She watched him dance to a CD this morning and giggled loudly the whole time ... what a magical sound! She spends as much time with him as she does with me, even more than her Daddy, so he is definitely an important part of her life.

She is putting everything in her mouth to explore it, and has recently started getting annoyed if I take something off her, so I always have to offer her something else in it's place.

She is an absolute joy, a happy and contented little soul, and a wise, knowing, observing being. We're all looking forwards to seeing what the next month may bring.