So baby girl, a week ago you turned six months old. A whole half year! Unbelievable.

You are getting more and more fun everyday. You are as curious and engaging as ever. You are more smiley and you laugh much more now. You exhibit great delight in your favourite things, songs and people. “Old MacDonald” is still your absolute favourite song and you often giggle when I start singing it. Your other favourite song is “Skip To My Lou”. You really like the “Talk to Me” book (with bright colours and lots of flaps to open) that your Nana got you. You love your godparents, Matt & Clare, and they adore you. (We’re glad you get to see them as often as you do, and wish you could see your American godparents, Trevor & Jenna, just as often.) And you really like the jingle bells that I bought you last week!

Your favourite thing to do is standing. You are very good at it: you can stand up supporting yourself (with only a finger or two – or sometimes the coffee table – to hold on to for balance) for quite a long time and you can push yourself up from squatting. You look incredibly proud of yourself when you stand and you look around to see who is appreciating your incredible talent. You are also getting better and better at sitting unsupported. You do very well when your feet are lower than your bum, and you can balance for a few seconds when sitting on a hard flat surface. (Even longer on a soft flat surface.) You still show very little sign of having any interest in rolling over, though, and while you can push yourself up when you’re on your tummy, you really don’t like being there.

You are quite chatty when we are at home but a little more reserved when we are away from home. Even with our group of NCT mothers and babies – who we get together with almost every Thursday – you are a lot less chatty than you are at home. In the past month you have had periods of taking great delight in using your tongue when you talk. For a few days you were saying “gluck, gluck, gluck” a lot. I find it particularly cute when you use your tongue to pronounce consonants that don’t really require it, like “k”.

You are eating more and more foods. You have a little porridge once or twice a day, usually with some mashed fruit mixed in. And you really love chewing on rice cakes, bread sticks and pieces of fruit or soft vegetable – like cucumber or courgette – that you can hold onto. You don’t quite eat enough yet to attribute to it your astonishing weight gain in the past month. You went from 14 lbs 2 oz at five months old to 15 lbs 13 oz at 6 months old. That pushed you into the 35th percentile for weight whereas up until now you’ve always been right on the 25th percentile line.

Your sleeping isn’t any more regular or predictable than it was a month ago. You are currently in a pattern of sleeping around 6 to 7 seven hours, waking for a feed around 2:3o-3:00ish, then sleeping until sometime between 6:00 and 6:30. I really preferred it when you slept until 7:30 or 8:00! We suspect the brightness of the room in the morning may be contributing to your early rising and are looking into getting effective blackout shades. Napping is completely unpredictable right now too. Yesterday your morning nap lasted barely 20 minutes and that was interrupted twice by coughing. This morning you slept for almost three hours. I have no explanation, other than that teething is clearly affecting you in all sorts of ways right now and your sleep is almost certainly one victim.

You charm people everywhere we go, little miss. Strangers frequently comment on what a gorgeous baby you are, what a beautiful smile you have, and how you take everything in. I just smile like the incredibly proud mummy that I am.