First and foremost I would excitedly like to announce that Lauren is no longer sleeping in a swaddle! Hip Hip!! I know, I know - she's eight months old, she should have been out of a swaddle six months ago!! It was a long road but just after she turned seven months old we were FINALLY able to have her take a normal nap and fall asleep at night on her own and without a swaddle. Hallelujah.
Secondly, it was a long month. A long month of doctors appointments, ear infections, antibiotics and more ear infections. She was first diagnosed with an ear infection (after seeing the doctor pretty much weekly for a nasty wet cough) back in the beginning of January. After THREE rounds of antibiotics she was finally clear of the ear infections right around her eight month birthday. There is still some fluid in her ears that just wont go away, so we are off to the ENT this month to get her checked out to see if we need to take any action at this time or if we can just let it be. The WORST part about the whole ordeal was the fact that her tummy was such a mess while she was on antibiotics. She never really wanted to eat solids and was only eating/nursing in small amounts but was eating frequently throughout the day. About a week before she turned eight months I decided to stop nursing and fully go to formula. It was a little bit of a rough transition but after about a week or so we were back on track. Around the same time she finally stopped taking medicine and she has been so much happier and so much more excited about eating solids ever since!
Speaking of solids in the past couple of weeks she has been a brand new baby! I discovered that she was eating A LOT of formula (like, uh, 40oz of formula a day) and decided to ramp up the solids effort. She now eats solids 2-3 times a day and *most* times she is super pumped and eats a ton. Like, she will sit down and eat an entire banana and half of a puree pouch. Homegirl loves to eat, this we know. She loves, loves, LOVES to feed herself. She is a total baby led weaning fan. She loves to eat sweet potatoes, bananas, toast with avocado, green beans, peaches, broccoli - the list goes on and on. She's making such great strides in her fine motor skills with all of this practice picking up food. Now...who wants to help me bathe her after every meal??
Lauren also got her THIRD tooth this past month! Its a top tooth, just to the left of her middle teeth. It is slowly making its way in and I swear the same tooth on the right side is also inching its way down. For the past few weeks she has been napping so much better and semi regularly as well. We still get a few 30 minute naps every now and then but for the most part they last 40mins - 1.5 hrs (if I'm lucky!). Her night sleeping is still all over the place. One day a week she will sleep from 6pm - 5am, the next she will wake at 4am, then at 3am and slowly each day she wakes earlier and earlier. And then randomly she goes back to sleeping until 5am. Whenever she wakes up she usually wants to eat. I am trying to wean her off of those night feedings slowly, but when Lauren wants to eat - she wants to eat! There is no convincing her otherwise. Luckily she *usually* goes right back to sleep until around 6:30am after she has a full tummy. She is always keeping me on my toes :)
Little lady is still THISCLOSE to crawling, but she just cant seem to make the leap. She's constantly on her hands and knees, rocking back and forth - she even shuffles her legs/knees around like she's going to start crawling...but inevitably she ends up back on her tummy, usually quite frustrated. I'm trying to leave little toys juuuust out of her reach to encourage her to take a move forward, but I don't think that her arms are quite strong enough to move herself forward. It's funny how much I cheer her on when I know that when she actually starts crawling it's going to make my life more difficult ;)
And, as I say every month, Lauren continues to be such a bright, shining light in our lives. Still so smiley, her cheeks even chubbier and her laugh ever more infectious.
