Happy half birthday Luna! Ok, so I know it’s a massive cliche but I feel like I blinked and 6 months whizzed by! How is it that our littlest princess Luna Grey is half way to one already? It feels as if changes are coming thick and fast at the moment and although I have tried to cling on to the baby days as much as possible, I’m slowly accepting she is no longer a tiny baby (sob!) Things like converting the pram to a pushchair and packing away the carrycot are ridiculously emotional (is that just me? – I really hate it!) She was getting so bored in her carrycot though and she’s much happier being able to see everything around her.

It’s not just the pram that’s gone, it’s her crib too as she recently moved into her cot in her own bedroom instead of sleeping in our room. It seemed that we were beginning to disturb her as she got older, so a couple of weeks ago we made the change and fortunately Luna settled there no problem. She now goes to bed around 8.30pm every night and reliably sleeps through till morning, I quite often have to wake her up on school mornings (during the Christmas holidays she was often sleeping in until about 10am!!) Having said that though, a couple of nights recently she has woken at 2am and had a nighttime breastfeed which hasn’t happened for a couple of months. It was no drama she went straight back to sleep after a 20 minute feed but I hope she’s not going to make a habit of it now!

Feeding wise, she is still breastfed but is now having a couple of formula feeds a day as well. I exclusively breastfed for 5 months, which I am quite proud of, as it’s so time consuming which is hard when I’ve got two other little ones keeping me busy too. I introduced the odd bottle of formula about a month ago as I’d got a few nights out planned and she took to it absolutely fine, in fact she didn’t seem to notice it was anything different (I tried my best not to feel offended that she didn’t even care!) Although I’m not ready to give up breastfeeding just yet, the next few weeks will probably see a gradual reduction and I’m just going to see how it goes (the fact that she is constantly pinching and often biting when she’s feeding now may bring a swifter end to breastfeeding than expected!!) With the end of maternity leave looming in the next few months I’m glad she is already happy to take a bottle of formula, as the mum guilt is bad enough without having a feeding battle to contend with too!

We have started weaning over the last few weeks, she wasn’t very keen at first on her first tastes (puréed veg) but she is gradually getting the hang of it and this week it has felt like she is actually eating most of it rather than just spitting it all out! We have only tried spoon fed purée so far, but I will be mixing in some baby led weaning too (I don’t really think it has to be just one or the other, I definitely think a combination of both works well).

Physically she is doing well, almost but not quite sitting up steadily (well not for much more than a few seconds anyway) but not far off now, she just needs to perfect her balance. She rolls over, loves kicking her legs and grabbing her feet and loves holding and playing with her toys. She has started going in her jumperoo and she is happy bouncing around like crazy in there but only for about 10 minutes at a time.

She is still the happiest little baby, pretty chilled out with smiles for anyone who looks at her (although she has a pretty loud cry too and lets us know of her rage in no uncertain terms when things aren’t to her satisfaction, she definitely gets ‘hangry’ – no idea where she could get that from!!) Her best smiles are saved for Sienna and Freya who get chuckled at with very little effort as she thinks they are hilarious! Freya will often just stand in front of her and repeat ‘Hello Luna!’ over and over again and Luna thinks it’s the funniest thing ever! We have been so lucky that both girls just adored Luna from day one and there hasn’t been any hint of jealousy, thank goodness!

While for now it feels as though she is still very much a baby (and is destined to be the baby of the family forever!) we are hurtling toward toddlerhood at an alarming rate! Before I know it, she will be sitting up, crawling, walking, talking (and no doubt throwing tantrums as I’m pretty sure she’s going to have a feisty streak) so for now I will carry on making the most of all the baby snuggles that I can get. Having older children really makes you realise how fleeting these baby days are – except of course when everyone’s screaming for different things, no ones napping, the toddler is in a hyper, the baby won’t be put down, the laundry mountain is threatening to take over the entire house, daddy is working late and you’ve got a banging headache – those days aren’t fleeting at all, I’m pretty sure they have a time zone all of their own and are about a million years long or something! Fortunately those days are few and far between and if I’m honest, if I could freeze time right where we are now, I would be very happy.