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Today was shockingly like yesterday and the day before, with the exception that I actually finished something today -- I folded the laundry. Woo! I'm still working on Christmas cards, though, and the tree is still only partially decorated. Neh.

This isn't normal, you know. It's only in the last couple of days that Delphine has been so needy. I can't figure out what the problem is. She'll be fine, playing away, and then suddenly she'll start with this kind of shouty irritable crying. Sometimes she'll stop by herself, and sometimes I'll pick her up and she'll settle down right away. It seems like she gets bored or otherwise tired with whatever she's doing, and that's when she cries. I thought maybe she had some kind of low-grade pain, that only bothered her when she didn't have anything else going on. That theory was shot when I tried giving her Tempra (acetaminophen) and it didn't make any difference. So. I don't know.

My other theory is that she's generally frustrated; she wants to do all kinds of things but can't yet. I hope once she's able to crawl she'll be happier. In January we're starting this playgroup thing with singing and dancing, crafts and snacks. That will be great for both of us; Delphine because she loves to be out and about, having new experiences and seeing new things. Me because I really need some tips about what kinds of activities little kids can do. And the company will be nice, too. I'm just about dying for January to come.

Otherwise, Delphine is doing really well. She's got two little teeth on the bottom, all sharp and ouchy. (She bit my finger twice today.) She almost crawls -- sometimes she gets the commando thing going on and gets around pretty well, but sometimes it just doesn't work out and she ends up going backwards, or not going at all, and then there's crying. She's best on hardwood or tile because she can slide around. She does get up on all fours and rock back and forth, as if she's working up momentum, but that's as far as she's got.

At her 6 month checkup she was almost 18 lbs and 27.4 inches. Her growth curve is slightly shallower than the standard growth chart, meaning she's moving gradually into normal. Her weight is increasing slower than her height, so she's getting a little leaner, which is good. I mean, I'm not worried that she's too fat, but I was a fat kid, and I'd like to spare her that if I can, and it seems easier to prevent her from becoming fat than to wait until she is and then try and fix it.

She's still largely breastfeeding, but she now eats three solid food meals a day. They're not really square meals, they're round and come in tiny bowls. She's only eating two food groups, fruit n' veg and cereal. Meat and milk products come in the next couple of months, although real actual milk doesn't come until even later, I can't remember when. I'm getting all my food cues from a wonderful book called Better Baby Food, which is written by a pair of dietitians from Sick Kids' Hospital, and I figure if they don't know how to feed babies, nobody does.

Delphine isn't much impressed by breakfast, and lunch isn't much better, but she loves dinner. She will eat whatever I throw at her at the evening meal, and lots of it. Today she had squash and banana with barley.

I'm not cooking for her as much as I thought I would. The jars of baby food are just fine -- the ingredients are always whatever the food is supposed to be (corn, peas, squash, apple, or whatever), and ascorbic acid, which is vitamin C but also handily happens to be a preservative. (I think.) (Corn also contains rice, which I thought was weird until I home prepared some pureed corn; it came out really runny so I thickened it up with... that's right, some rice cereal.) Anyway, they're not all full of weird ingredients, or sugar and starch and thickeners, as I was led to believe (by my mother) that they would be. They're just fine.

The other nifty thing that Gerber does (Heinz doesn't do it) is they dehydrate their apple puree a little bit, so it tastes a little stronger than regular apple sauce. It's tasty. Actually, all the jarred foods I've tried have been really tasty, because they can pick the sweetest, tastiest produce when they process it. I, on the other hand, made a batch of pureed apricot that was so sour I couldn't even eat it. So, cooking your own baby food isn't all it's cracked up to be.

And she just woke up and is all cry-y and sad, so I should go brush my teeth so we can all go to bed together. Remind me to tell you how we're all still sleeping together and I'm scared I'll never get my bed back.