Madeline: Seven Months

7 months! Where is the time going? It seems like I just posted my last update just last week. Things to be getting more and more fun with this baby girl as time goes on. She continues to become more playful and her little personality is becoming stronger. And also, she just gets cuter and cuter. I’m not sure how it’s possible to get any cuter once you have already achieved the ultimate level of cuteness, but this girl does it!

More and more changes happening over the last month!

Teeth: 2!

Just a week before she hit 7 months, her first tooth started poking on the bottom front and we noticed this morning that there might be another starting to poke its way through. I think she is generally handling this process pretty well. She was slightly crabbier than normal this past weekend and took some really long naps, but it was nothing too terrible. We just gave her some teething tablets and some Tylenol on and off and she seems to be doing okay.

Food:

Favorite fruit: Pears
Favorite veggies: green beans, squash, and sweet potatoes
Least favorites: avocado and peaches

We have been having a lot of fun with solids! Every morning, Maddie has some baby oatmeal mixed in with a little bit of fruit. So far, I think her favorite is pears. Over the last couple of weeks, she seems to want more solids so we started giving her some for lunch and then she also eats a little bit at dinner. I have tried giving her avocado three times and she just doesn’t seem as interested and usually only has a few bites. It’s a bit disappointing considering that I think I am actually 83% made from avocados, but I am going to keep trying though and maybe start mixing it with some other foods. As for peaches, I don’t know why, but I just think these are her least favorite. She doesn’t refuse them, but whenever I mix them in with her cereal, she seems to eat less of it and when I offer them to her plain, she only takes a few bites. Thus, I am convinced that peaches and avocados are her least favorite foods so far.

She also loves the food pouches! We went out of town this past weekend so I packed organic baby food pouches to feed her on the road and she gobbled them up! I’m not sure if she just likes the taste of the food better or if she likes the novelty of eating out of a pouch.

Now that she has tried a lot of foods on their own, I’m excited to start making more of her foods and to start experimenting with some fun combinations! Expect a baby food recipe post next month!

Madeline: Seven Months
(Have your ovaries exploded yet?)

Sleep:

I’m happy to report that we now have Maddie on a pretty good nap schedule and that she has finally started taking longer naps! She typically goes to sleep at night around 7 and is up between 6:30-7am. She takes her first nap between 9:30-10 and typically sleeps for at least an hour and then takes another afternoon nap around 1:30 or so for another hour, sometimes a little bit longer. And of course, there are bad days where she only naps for about 30 minutes. I actually think she could do with a third nap many days, especially when her afternoon naps are shorter, but she really fights us on the third nap and it rarely happens.

The best thing about her naps is that it is so easy to get her down. We put her in a sleep sack, read a quick book, give her lots of kisses, lower the shades and turn on her sound machine and she lets us put her straight down in her crib and puts herself to sleep without a fight.

The nights are not so easy and are still sometimes a struggle. We have a good routine leading up to bedtime with a bath, book, and bottle, but sometimes she is so tired, she falls asleep in the middle of her bottle and I have to let her sleep for 10-15 minutes before moving her to get her to finish it. And if I put her down in her crib awake, she screams and screams. I really want to try to change this, but it’s hard because we live in a townhouse with a shared wall and feel like it’s not fair to our neighbors to let her cry it out. I also am a bit selfish with this because I work all day and I have loved our time together at night putting her to sleep. I love snuggling up with her in our chair and sitting in the cool dark room listening to her sound machine and smelling her addicting and perfect baby smell, but I also feel like it shouldn’t take over an hour to put her to sleep at night at this age.

Some nights she sleeps all the way though, some nights she wakes up once or twice. I want to do away with nighttime feedings and diaper changes, but sometimes these are the only things that get her to finally go back to sleep and stay asleep, so maybe she still needs them? I don’t know! Please help me!

Other fun stuff:

– Lots of reaching! Reaching for us to pick her up (omg, so cute!), and lots of reaching for objects she wants us to hand her.
– Still no crawling, but she is really getting the hang of scooting (on her tummy) and rolling all over to get around. You can tell she wants to crawl so badly and sometimes gets frustrated.
– So many more noises and screeches! We die of the cuteness from it all every day. She lets out these little screams when she gets excited and keeps saying “Maaaaa” lately. I’m convinced she is trying to say “mommy”.
– Her hand coordination continues to improve. Her new favorite thing is to take two objects in both of her hands and bang them together. She gets this funny little smile on her face like she is so proud of herself.
– Like most baby and toddlers, boxes and tissue paper that crinkles is way more entertaining than any toy she has.
– She is really getting into reading, especially after a nap or first thing in the morning. She really listens and loves when we use funny voices.