6 months with Millie!

Millie girl is nearly 7 months old so it’s about time for an update! I might not have the time to write monthly posts for Millie like I did with Alba Grace but I can assure you we love her to pieces, even if she doesn’t get a monthly blog post with coordinating photos! I’m sure other working mama’s of two can relate! It’s not easy but it’s the best.

I feel like Millie has been ours forever and also like we’re still getting to know her! She is sweet sweet sweet. When I think about her personality I have to smile. She just melts you! Her big gummy smile lights up the room. Everything on her face lights up when she’s smiling. Her cheeks, her eyes, her little dimples. It’s so good! When she cries she’s almost immediately soothed with direct eye contact and a smile thrown in her direction. She’s in the 90th percentile for weight, much chunkier than her big sister was. I love every roll and her big baby thighs.

I lay her and AG down at the same time for an afternoon nap but if I get a fuss from Millie I usually pick her right up and let her snuggle under my arm while I work from my computer. She stares at the laptop and then looks up at me mesmerized. I love the way babies stare at us like we hung the moon. Pearce and I aren’t her favorites though, it’s her big sister that she can’t get enough of! When she wakes up she looks around the room until she sees Alba Grace and then she smiles. She could watch AG play all day and anytime AG hands her a toy or tickles her, she loses her mind! True joy if I ever saw it! Alba Grace is starting to take to Millie too. From the moment she wakes up she wants Millie in the same room as her, she wants to make sure Millie has a clean diaper if she needs one and will track down a bottle of milk immediately if Millie cries. Watching their little relationship flourish is the greatest gift. I am so grateful they’ll always have a friend in each other. I don’t want to rush anything but I’m looking forward to the day when they can chase each other around the house. They’re so close in age and both still in diapers, so some days it feels more like I have twins (and all the twin mamas said, “you don’t EVEN know sister!”) but I’m happy we decided to have them close together. Well, God decided.

Overall she’s been an easy baby! She’s pretty chill and content until she’s hungry. Like her mama, she gets haaaangry. Truthfully, she’s been thrown right into AG’s schedule so she had to learn to go with the flow pretty early on! She’s not sleeping through the night every night like her sister was at this age, but that’s because we haven’t been as strict with moms on call training this time around. Not by choice really. Our current house is smaller than our last and the bedrooms are so close together. So allowing her to cry it out, even for a few minutes is easier said than done! We’re working on it though.

EATING

Millie had pretty bad acid reflux for a while but that’s improving. I nursed for a couple of months as I did for Alba Grace and then switched over to formula in hopes that it would help her tummy troubles. The switch didn’t help much but since I was exclusively pumping at this point, the swap to formula was a necessary change for my mental health! Thankful she had the wonderful perks from breast milk those first few months. Also thankful I’m no longer glued to a pump on my sofa.

HOW AM I ADJUSTING?

I definitely struggled more emotionally/hormonally this time around. I think part of that was having them so close together. They say your body takes a full 18 months to recover hormonally from having a baby. I didn’t have 18 months before getting pregnant with Millie so I think that’s why things felt a little off-balance.

In true McKenzie fashion, I started a new business when Millie was still an infant. That helped me feel much more like myself. My nugget of advice to anyone struggling with PPD or lingering baby blues is to find something that makes you feel a bit more like yourself. And then to give it a bit of your time each day. I started waking up earlier and earlier so that I could spend quiet time in my bible each morning. I started giving my new business a little bit of my time each day. I started walking every single day, with the girls in tow. And after a while I started feeling like myself again.

I had a hard recovery, not as hard as my recovery with Alba Grace but still hard. We had just moved into our fixer-upper THE NIGHT BEFORE Millie was born and the place was still not at all finished or put together. And on top of all of that, I had just had a pretty traumatic birth experience thanks to Covid and our family and friends couldn’t rally around us the way they had in the past. We wanted to be careful not to expose Millie to anything in those first few weeks but really missed having family and friends around to help us the way they had after Alba Grace was born. After AG was born Pearce was home for over two months – taking care of baby and mama! This time around he had to go back to work after just two weeks. And chasing a toddler around while caring for a newborn is a whole new ball game. It was tough, but the hardest days are behind us and we’ve found our rhythm! I’m feeling like myself again and I’m truly loving being a mama to TWO, especially now that I’m home with them every day.

HAIR COLOR

Always get questions about her hair color, since sister’s a redhead! We thought for a minute that Millie would have red hair but it’s turned pretty brown! I think she’ll be a brunette like her mama.

HER FAVORITE THINGS

Her sister, her walker, anything that makes a crinkling or crunching noise, baths, tickles, holding my hands and dancing in her room, cuddles, and riding in the stroller with her feet propped up on the handlebar! 😉

ADVENTURES

Millie has already lived through a pandemic, visited disney world twice, gone to the zoo and a local farm, splashed at the beach, had overnight stays with one grandma and two great grandmas, dressed up for halloween, celebrated her first Christmas, cheered on the pirates at football games, celebrated her papa’s 70th birthday and taken a roadtrip! That’s a lot of life in just 7 months. We love having her along for the ride! 🙂