All About Our Sweet Jillian at the Six Month Mark

Jillian is a whopping six months old! Half a year! And man oh man, does she know how to make me us very happy parents.

I’m not sure I’ve done many (any??) posts where I share updates specifically about Jillian, but today I want to zero in on all things related to our “oops caboose” and our “best bonus baby ever”… just two of her nicknames that we’ll need to nip in the bud before she understands what we’re talking about. 😉

Speaking of nicknames, she has a few! It’s so funny to me how nicknames just kind of happen. We call her Jilly all the time. We also call her JJ (her initials) and Jilly bean. Surprisingly we’ve never, not one time, called her Jill. That just hasn’t fallen out of our mouths quite like Jilly does. 

So we officially have a Hadley, Sadie, and Jillian, who are also referred to 50%+ of the time as Hadley Boo, Sadie Rose (her middle name has just STUCK and we love it), and Jilly. Love these girls. 

She goes in for her six month check-up on Monday, so I don’t know her stats just yet. We think she’s right around 16-17 pounds though. I’ll be curious to see!

Milestones

She has one tooth (on the bottom) with the one next to it about to burst through (we see it!)

She has been rolling for a while and flops all over the place. She is quite the wiggle worm!

She is trying hard to pull her knees under her and figure out this crawling thing.

She is beginning to sit up if I put her in the right position and hold herself there briefly.

Eating

She has been eating pureed food for a little over a month and has really enjoyed everything she’s tried. She’s our first kid not to make a “chilly willy” face when eating greens. Ha! We already think she’ll be our best eater, which will hopefully encourage her big sisters to eat some new foods too. 

We are still breastfeeding and it’s going well. She breastfeeds about four times a day, roughly every 3-4 hours.

She is now eating pureed meals 2-3x a day.

Formula supplementation is still going well. On average, she gets a bottle once a day, usually if her grandparents are watching her, if she’s in the church nursery, or if I’m busy doing something around the house (and Jamie decides to feed her a bottle instead of hand her to me to feed.)

Sleep

If we spend the whole day at home, she will generally take a couple of two-hour naps and then go to bed at 7 p.m. Most days we do not spend the whole day at home though due to preschool drop off/pick up, dance class, etc., but we just try our best to get in naps at home as much as we can. If we can time it all well, GREAT.

With two other kids to run around though, she often cat naps in the car which ruins the chance of napping at home. We have no steady routine for sleep at this point because quite frankly, it’s impossible. If I could control the exact time she wakes up in the morning it would be possible, but obviously that’s not. 😉

We are just doing our best, and I try (keyword: TRY!) not to sweat it. I often remind myself that she has two older siblings and that’s all there is to it. Feeling guilty that she can’t nap at home on a strict schedule is something I decided a long time ago not to stress about. I try my best to give her a chance to nap in her crib every day, which we usually make happen at least once a day.

The four-month sleep regression hit us all extremely hard, so we finally started trying to actively get her back to sleeping well about two weeks ago. Thankfully she’s now only waking up once a night, usually between 12:30-2. I go in to feed her, and then she usually sleeps until official wake-up time. Occasionally she wakes up around 5 a.m., but we just replace her pacifier, pat her little booty, and she easily goes back to sleep.

We transitioned her to her crib in her own room at the 4.5 month mark, which was hard for a slew of reasons, but I’m very glad we powered through and ripped that Band-Aid off. 

Clothing

She has a few of her “own” outfits, but she mostly wears hand-me-downs from the big girls. All three girls were born in different seasons though, so I do my best to make it all work! 

More

In the last week or so, she has started raising her arms to be picked up, which is the sweetest!

She loves to be entertained by her sisters and soaks up any attention they’ll give her. 

We have a million kinds of pacifiers, but this brand is her favorite. We’ve started clipping them to her shirt with these clips, which has been so helpful.

She really enjoys being outside and especially enjoys her new swing!

Baby Gear

The baby gear we use the most right now include the bumbo seat, our original Ergo carrier, her activity center, doorway jumper, Joovy baby walker, her high chair, and this vibrating bouncer seat. It’s so helpful to have a ton of places to plop her to play and hang. 

Sisters

I could never have predicted how much joy Jillian would bring Hadley and Sadie. I worried (a lot) that having a baby in the home would take away so much from them (“We’ll be too tied down with a baby to get out and do big kid things!”), but the exact opposite has happened. Not only are Jamie and I much more intentional about one-on-one time with our big girls, but Jillian is truly their favorite person. Sadie wakes up so grumpy and sluggish, but as soon as she sees Jillian, she is instantly happy and smiling. Hadley is all over Jillian constantly. They just really, really x a million LOVE her. And she loves them.

Having a sister is a special thing, and I will do everything in my power to nurture and encourage their relationships with each other as they grow. They are so lucky to have each other, and I hope they always know that.

I have so many thoughts about our transition to three kids that I look forward to unloading out of my brain onto this blog soon. 🙂 Spoiler alert though: Three kids totally rocks. It’s not without many difficult, challenging, or exhausting moments (I’ve never been more physically tired in my entire life), but the extra love in the home is all-consuming. 

Let’s chat!

When did your kids decide they didn’t want to wear their siblings’ hand-me-downs anymore? I’m curious how long I’ll be able to get away with this. 🙂

More: Sadie at six months | Hadley and Sadie’s first six months and how they differed