Austin and Malia hit the 6 month milestone on Sunday, and they are developing such unique personalities. Now stretching out the sleep interval at night, we are finally able to get a little more sleep, and usually wake up only once in the middle of the night to feed. It's nice to have them in a predictable diurnal routine, and lots of sleep makes for two pretty happy babies when they're awake.
We won't have any data to report until next Monday when we take them in for their 6 month checkup, but we expect that their growth is still moving along in the right direction. Both are hitting new milestones and getting quite strong, and this time Malia has passed her brother on some of the physical milestones. While she can easily roll over from tummy to back, she seems to be close to being able to roll from back to tummy. Yikes! She's a strong and determined baby, and loves to practice pushing herself up onto her feet (with a little help, of course!). Austin is strong and robust, but also contending with the forces of gravity against his bulging physique. He loves to kick and move while on his back, but definitely is not as far along as his sister in supporting his own weight with his legs.
Both kids are happy and having a good time, especially when interacting with people. Austin is belting out high-pitched humpback whale calls, which to the untrained ear might sound like distress - but then we'll check on him and he's having so much fun with himself that he's sounding it out emphatically. Malia demands a little more stimulus to evoke the happy face, but once you get her started she laughs uncontrollably, like in the video below with Lolo Manny.
As you might also see in the video, Malia got her ears pierced. We wrestled with the decision for awhile, but finally decided it was a good time to do it since she probably wouldn't remember. Definitely a cute touch to her adorable face, especially with her big, gummy smile.
We recently shot some family photos, and dressed the kids up for the occasion. Here are some of the highlights...
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| Austin's GQ pose |
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| Not many good shots from this sequence, as you can see Austin was over it here |
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| Cute little munchkins |
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| Malia wasn't letting the photo shoot interfere with her beauty rest |
They also experienced their first Halloween, which isn't very exciting for babies of this age. Our attempts to capture some good shots of them in their costumes were pretty much unsuccessful, but here's what we ended up with:
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| Snow White and Dopey Dwarf |
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| Austin reached his max for costume time... that's a wrap! |
And some random other pics...
