Watch Me Grow - Eight Months

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. 

Watch Me Grow - Seven Months

If have to start off by saying that I FORGOT to mention two of the most important/exciting developments in last months post (Six Months) - Lauren got TWO teeth AND she started eating solids. Woohooo!! Lauren's first bottom middle tooth popped up midway through the month and once that one came through it wasn't long before the one right next to it cut through as well. I'd like to blame her night wakings and short naps on the teething buuuut those haven't exactly stopped and no more teeth are coming through.

On Thanksgiving day Miss L had her first bite of solid foods - sweet potatoes! Basically she was disgusted at the actual taste of it, but for the most part she just pushed it around her mouth and spit it out. I was a bit slow at first getting her started (ahh sorry second child) but her first couple of foods included sweet potatoes, avocado and bananas!

Ok, ok - onto the current month!

Seven months old. We are officially closer to her first birthday than we are the day she was born. Insert all of the crying emojis here. And this has been a BIG month. Solids. Sitting up. Scooting. Apparently all the big developments start with the letter "S". A lot of exciting developments came right around Christmas time. After those first two teeth came in she must have started feeling a heck of a lot better as she started sitting up on her own much better than before. I still use the boppy sometimes to cushion her (if she isn't paying attention or turns around too fast, over she tumbles) but for the most part she is sitting up nice and strong. Around the same time she also started getting up on her hands and knees AND getting up on her hands and tip toes! This girl does a mean plank - don't let the chub fool you, she's got a six pack under that belly!

She's starting coming along with eating solid foods. It took her a while to actually ingest any of the food (most of it ended up on the walls, all over her face and/or all over me. I forgot how messy this stage is) but that is mostly my fault because for the first few weeks we were on a "try-solids-once-every-three-days" schedule. I just could not handle one more thing in my day! BUT! Now we are on track. So far she has tried sweet potato (puree and mashed), apple slices (in a mesh pouch), bananas (mashed and whole), sugar snap peas (raw), pears (puree), avocado (mashed), butternut squash (puree) and baby oatmeal cereal. I am doing a mix of baby led weaning and purees, depending on what I have on hand and how much time I have.

Sleep. Oh sleep. How I miss you. We did have a good run, for about four nights around New Years when she was sleeping from 6/6:30 - 5am and then back down for another two hours. But that was short lived. Luckily she is pretty much only getting up once a night, anywhere from 2:30-4:30am, and then will sleep until about 6am (she is usually in bed, asleep by 6pm). Naps are all over the board but are most likely to be about 35-45 minutes long. But the worst thing is that she is STILL sleeping in her swaddle during nap time!! I tried taking it away for a whole week and she literally only took 20-30 minute naps. It was terrible. She was exhausted, I was exhausted and her sleep deprivation started waking her up during the middle of the night. So, back in the swaddle she went. She might be going to college with her swaddle packed up with her extra long twin sheets.

And, as always, she continues to be such a ray of light in our family. Kaitlin and Lauren are still getting along great (although as Lauren gets to be on the move and discover Kaitlin's toys, Kaitlin is starting to suspect this might not be all fun and games). Her smile can light up a room and there is literally nothing she loves more than when her sister plays with her.

Watch Me Grow - Six Months

How are we half way to her FIRST birthday already?! Cue the tears - it's going by so fast!! This past month Lauren has grown so big, and is getting so strong. Last month she had JUST started rolling over constantly onto her tummy, and she is still pretty much doing that all of the time. She STILL hasn't really figured out how to roll back onto her back once she's there though. The few times that she manages to (or, rather, accidentally) do it she starts crying and I think gets really scared. During the day this is all fine but at night time. Ohhh at night time. This is a problem when she wakes up on her tummy and starts freaking out. She finally started rolling over on her tummy to sleep this month, though we have seen mixed results with it. Some days/nights she sleeps on her tummy all day and night long, with minimal problems. Some days it results in crying fits, 20 minute naps and multiple wake ups a night. I've said it from the beginning and it's still true - she loves to keep me on my toes.

Night sleeping has its good weeks and its bad weeks. A good week looks like sleeping from 6-6:30pm until 4-5am, a quick feed and then back down to sleep until 6:30am or so. A bad week looks like waking up at 1am, 3am, 4am, and then up for the day at 6am. Please send me all of the coffee those weeks. She has been swaddle free at night time for a few weeks now and still gets mixed results. Naps are a different story. Sometimes she is swaddled sometimes she is not. I wish I could say that swaddling = long nap and/or no swaddle = short nap but it's never really the same result. The good thing is that - most times - she wakes up happy as a clam whether she has had 25 minutes rest or 2 hrs.

Lauren has also started doing raspberries with her tongue, although they are a bit weak :) She is still the happiest, smiliest baby but no one can make her laugh like her big sister. Kaitlin loves to play with her and is so good at distracting her or trying to get her to stop crying. Any time Kaitlin pays attention to Lauren she just lights right up and starts smiling and laughing like crazy. I would be lying if I said it didn't melt me into a big puddle every time.