Charlotte at 6 months

Charlotte Smiles

We have been blessed with a baby with a wonderful temperament and personality!

Charlotte is a happy baby who smiles and chats all the day long.  

Charlotte Crawls

At five months the little lady was on her hands and knees rocking back and forth.  All month she learned to scoot and roll and shimmy around.  Not really where she wanted to go necessarily, but she could move!

A few days after she turned 6 months it became official.  She was crawling!  

Phew!

This month she has been on the move.  Just yesterday I noted to myself that she was getting faster.  She also showed us that she could climb up the step from the family room to the kitchen!  In a dress, no less.

It is quite a job to wash her in the tub with all her activity--rolling and crawling in the water. 

 It can get quite physical!

Charlotte Sleeps

Here she snuggles with Aunti Kate at the ranch earlier this month.

I've been avoiding the cry-it-out thing...waiting until I was desperate.

Well, I'd had too many unpredictable naps (because they were always that way), and waaaaaaay too many late nights and nights getting up every 2-3 hours (occasionally much worse).  I'd tried all kinds of no-cry ideas and I wasn't making much, if any, progress.

I got desperate.

After a bit of bedtime protesting (the miserable part for everyone), Charlotte got the hang of it.
I'm amazed how quickly she figured out how to put herself to sleep!  Now she rarely cries--maybe just a shout as I walk out the door.  Equally exciting, after just a few nights she began sleeping all night long!  Now she is sleeping from 6:45pm until 7:30am without waking up!  (Ok, so we just had our second consecutive night of this, but I feel it will stick!)

Naps are another thing entirely.  They are 30 minutes on average.
Boo.

But we've made great strides in falling asleep and sleeping all night!
I couldn't be happier and feel better about that!

Way to go, girl!