Seven Months

Lily Rae is seven months old today!

I imagine that every month I'll write about how quickly time is passing, but I especially feel it every month on the 21st when Lily's age increases. Her daddy and I have decided that we want to keep saying that she is six months old for a little while longer!

Here's what she's up to.

Eating: Lily is now eating a pretty good variety of food. So far she likes all of the fruit we have tried (bananas, peaches, apples, prunes, and pears), and some of the vegetables. Carrots and sweet potatoes are her very favorites. She will eat squash and sweet peas only if I mix them with other veggies, but she absolutely does not like green beans. She is still eating her oatmeal and rice cereal, and we have now added barley cereal and brown rice cereal, as well as the cereals with fruit mixed in. She has recently started eating some of the stage 2 combination foods as well. There's not a whole lot to report about her eating lately. I'm very glad that she finally got over her loss of appetite after her six-month shots and is eating well again. While I haven't completely given up on making homemade baby food, the vast majority of food I've given her this month has been store bought. I love giving her the homemade stuff out of the freezer when it's available, but the fact is that it's hard to find a free Saturday or weeknight to make and store new food. Hopefully we can experiment with some other foods soon.

Trying out her high chair

We are still nursing also. It's going pretty well, but nursing during the day is beginning to taper off a bit, I think. I still offer it, though I guess it makes sense that she will want/need less and less milk now that she is eating more solid food. Lily still nurses really well for her first and last feedings of the day; she is just getting too busy and distracted to nurse for longer than a few minutes during the day. She would much rather play! I'm thrilled that we've made it to seven months, considering that my "big goal" starting out was six months. For now I'm planning to keep going and follow her lead in the coming weeks/months.

Sleeping: Oh dear. Sleeping. It's really not horrible, but it's not as good as it used to be. I've read about and heard others talk about the six/seven month sleep regression and I think we've been dealing with it at our house. Also, we "weaned" Lily from swaddling and I think that has made a difference also. We did it gradually, leaving one arm out for several weeks first and finally trying it with both arms free. That first night was awful! We actually went back to leaving one arm out of the swaddle for a little while before trying it again. Lily does pretty well now sleeping in her sleep sack with her arms free. We decided to stop swaddling because she had started rolling over. I'm glad we went ahead with it, even though she never does roll onto her tummy in bed. Just in case, though.

Anyway, we have had a few rough nights this month with Lily randomly waking up during the night. Most of the time she just needs a touch and some humming/shushing to settle her, but a few times we have spent an hour or longer trying to get her to go back to sleep. And I think that the right time has finally presented itself for moving her from the bassinet to the crib. It's a transition that we're going to tackle in the next week or two, and I think everyone will sleep better once we do it. Of course, we will still hear her on the monitor and respond when she needs us, but having her in her own room will mean that we won't constantly worry about waking her up when we walk across the noisy floor, use the bathroom, or even turn over in our creaky bed! I certainly will miss having her in her little bassinet in my room, but I feel like the time is right.

"I'm getting too big for this bed!"

Generally speaking, Lily still goes to bed around 8:30 or 9 PM (we're trying to make this earlier) and wakes up to eat between 6 and 7 AM. I can usually get her to snooze with me until about 9 before we start the day. She still takes two naps most days, although I'm afraid she's getting ready to give up her early evening nap. That will be okay with me as long as we can achieve that earlier bedtime.

Milestones: Lily is better at sitting up now. I'll put the Boppy around her if I need to walk away because she occasionally will fall over, but she is doing much better with it on her own. When Lily is playing on her tummy, she has started pushing up a little bit on her knees but no scooting or crawling yet. Boy, will our world change when she figures out how to get around! I know it's just around the corner.

One of the sweet pics taken by our talented friend, Crystal, this month.

Lily is grabbing everything in sight now. This week, for the first time, she pulled the glasses completely off of her great-aunt's face and tried to chew on them! Everything goes straight into her mouth, of course. The sweetest new thing I've noticed this month is that Lily is beginning to understand the little games that we play with her. She smiles when I say I'm going to "get her," even if I say it in a normal voice, because she knows that she's about to get tickled. She definitely responds to her own name now, also. Lily still LOVES for me to sing to her. Loves it! I feel like I sing all the livelong day, but my baby girl sure does enjoy it for some reason. If I am rocking her to sleep or even nursing her lately, she will look up at me and "fuss" and grab at my mouth with her little hand until I start singing, that little stinker! Her favorite songs are the Alphabet Song/Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (an easy transition for me if I get tired of one or the other since they have the same tune), The Wheels on the Bus, and the hymn 'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus. There are other songs that she likes, but those are her favorites by far.

We have really been enjoying our outings with Lily lately. She can now ride up front in the shopping cart at the store, and she's also big enough for her upright stroller now. Last weekend we spent an afternoon shopping at the mall and Lily loved being pushed around in her stroller. We've made a few trips to the park this month also and she adores being outside.

At the park

That's what's new with my sweet Lily-girl this month. We're getting ready to leave tomorrow to spend a whole week with my family in Louisiana! It's Easter, of course, but it's also my sister's birthday on Monday and she (a teacher) and my nephews are on spring break from school all week long. We are so looking forward to some much-needed family time with them and with my mom. I love this time of year, and I wish you all a very happy Easter weekend!

Short Update and Pics

Hello friends! It's been a long time away from the blog this month. There are lots of things I'd like to write about lately, so I'm hoping to be a little bit better about managing my time. I thought I'd write just a quick update and share a few of Lily's six-month pictures that we had made at Target a few weeks ago. In another week she'll be seven months old already!

Lily had her six-month checkup with her doctor at the beginning of this month (so she was really 6.5 months old). I have to say I knew that she'd grown quite a bit this time but her weight surprised me a little! My chunky monkey weighed 17 pounds and 3 ounces and was just over 26 inches long. She has now doubled her birth weight and her doctor says she is doing great.

I'm so thankful that she has been doing so well, and the introduction of solid foods has been a success. It kind-of freaked me out, then, that the day after her checkup she wanted absolutely nothing to do with her cereal, fruits, or vegetables. I figured she just wasn't feeling like herself and had lost her appetite because of the nasty shots and fever that she always has the next day, but it continued for an entire week, long after the fever was gone. Each day she seemed to get a little bit better, though, so I guess she just needed some time. Thankfully, she was still nursing regularly even though she'd lost interest in other food. It is a relief to see her back to her old self again and eating like a champ. I am very, very happy that she won't have to have any shots for six more months!

Here are some of our favorites from her photo shoot at Target. (It did take two attempts to get a good session. The first one wound up being too close to nap time and we had a fussy baby on our hands! Our rescheduled session went great.) It's amazing to see how much she has changed in the couple of weeks since we had these pictures taken. She is now sitting up without support and I think her hair has even grown a bit. It seems she is growing and changing faster than we can keep up!





As you can see, she still has no teeth! Love that gummy baby smile. :)