Surprisingly, the nights are much easier than the days: Jenny pretty much sleeps all night except for a feeding a few hours after we put her down, and she usually drops right off again immediately after that, but it is often a struggle getting her to take her daytime naps. Apparently, babies do not just topple over if they stay awake too long; they just get crankier and LESS willing to sleep. Otherwise, things are going fairly smoothly as far as I can tell, but I am not the one called into service everytime my daughter needs to nurse, and we only recently started her on semi-solid foods, so it is definitely harder for the wife.

The important thing is the baby is doing well. We seem to be the past the point where she periodically decides EVERYTHING WILL NEVER EVER NEVER BE ALRIGHT AGAIN111, and I think we dodged colic (yea!) Her disposition is generally pleasant unless overtired, in need of a change or her meal is delayed, but that is too be expected and she usually regains her equilibrium once the particular problem is addressed. She appears developmentally normal (I need to find ways to engage her when she gets that too-frequent bored look on her face,) having done her first roll over from back to belly a few weeks ago. The odd thing is we were worried about that being delayed because everytime we put her on her stomach she started raising Hell almost immediately, but now that she knows how to do it on her own, she immediately flips the OTHER way whenever we put her on her back.

We had the 6 month check up today: 65 cm and ~8½ kg, which I understand to be about where she should be. If anything, she is TOO big, but my reference frame may be a bit off: The chief recent standards I have are my brother-in-laws 1½ year-old son and the 9 month old daugher of my wifes best friend, but the former had a difficult delivery and the latter nursing difficulties, both of which made them small for their age, so I am not sure how much attention to give my daughter being bigger than those older kids (and she is no longer bigger than her cousin; after a scary start, he seems perfectly fine now. ) The nice thing is that there are always plenty of clothes those kids have grown out of, not that has stopped my mom and mother-in-law getting more at every opportunity (the people who will really make out here are all my wifes friends who just had babies of their own.) Judging by that 9 month old, I expect crawling in the next month or so, and then the REAL fun will start, because babies are like dogs in that they have a simple expedient way to figure out what new things are: Stick it in their mouths and suck on it till they reach a conclusion....