7 months

My baby is closer to a year than to birth..what?!

This month has been lots of fun, except for the two week stint that Charlie was in Korea for. Though, even then, we went to visit my parents for the week and Josie loved to seeing so much of her Gram and Pop Pop! The most exciting development is that she is making physical signals that crawling isn't far away. Yes, this strikes terror in my heart. She will now sit up and lean forward with both hands out in front of her and stretch to reach a toy. Just yesterday she did that move and then rocked back and forth a little bit. She is also starting to pull up to her knees. Earlier this week I set her in her crib to play while I put her clothes away and I turned around and she had pulled herself over to her crib rail and was gnawing on the rail while on her knees.  

I stood her up but isn't she a cutie?

My prediction is that by the 8 month post we'll have a crawler on our hands. Let the baby proofing commence!

Another first this month was her first flight. Josie and I flew up to Massachusetts to visit Anne for a few days right before her 7 month birthday. (Her 7 month pictures were taken at Anne's house). Josie did very well. On the flight up she fell asleep for most of it and only got upset when they came on the loudspeaker to announce our approach to Boston and woke her up. The flight home she was also good, despite it being between naps and right before bed. It helped ease my anxiety too to focus on her.

Let's rock and roll

Flying like a champ

Josie was a traveling fool in January since we also stayed with my parents for a week. Here she is with her Gram. I have a picture of her with Pop Pop but it's on my camera and I'm already late getting this up. Sorry Dad! :)

We went to the park one (cold, rainy) day with Kristin and Weston. Josie loved the swings and watching Weston run around. Soon they'll be running together showing Weston's new brother or sister (arriving this month!) how to do it!

Aside from the traveling, the biggest adventure of the month was starting solids. Josie is apparently like her mama and enjoys being in control. She was NOT a fan of purees and would cry as soon as I moved the spoon close to her mouth. However, she is a fan of holding her own food and feeding herself. Her current favorites seem to be sweet potatoes and carrots. Now, I use the word "favorite" loosely here. These are the two things I can count on her almost always putting in her mouth and chewing and sometimes swallowing (the proof is in the diaper if you catch my drift). She still mostly plays with her food, it doesn't seem to have connected yet that "if I eat this it fills my stomach". Most moms I've talked to have said that one day their kiddo just "got it" and all of a sudden ate a bunch.

Carrot

Sweet Potato

Very unimpressed with mashed avocado

I'll take that spoon thankyouverymuch

Her nigthtime sleep is still awesome- going strong at 12 or 12.5 hours a night. Her naps are getting better but are still somewhat unpredictable. She naps three times a day and for most of the month was taking a 1.5 hour morning nap and then two 1/2 hour naps. Now she might be changing that up. Recently her morning nap is about 40 minutes and then her second nap is 1 hour+, hollowed by a final 25-30 minute nap in the late afternoon. The book that I've been reading that seems to be pretty on point says that first her morning nap will be the longest and then she'll transition to a shorter morning nap and  longer afternoon nap, which I assume is what may be happening. I have no idea so we shall see.

She still has no teeth. Last week it was very obvious she was teething- hands shoved in her mouth, drool all over. But still no teeth.

7 months

Foods eaten: avocado, sweet potato, carrot, green bean, egg yolk, pear, banana, squash, pumpkin, broccoli, homemade oatmeal

Teeth: STILL zero

Weight: 14 lbs

New Skills: Sitting like a champ, rocking up on her knees, eating solid food

Moment in Time

I keep thinking to myself that I want to remember all the cute little things that Josie does at each stage of her development because almost as soon as she learns something- it's gone from her repertoire. So, for my own memory here are some things I love or that she has learned at almost 6 and half months.

• She just learned how to buzz her lips and will entertain herself by doing it. Unfortunately she has also learned that she can buzz her lips to spit out her food. This makes for messy feedings.

• Food. Not a huge fan yet. So far she's had bananas, avocado, homemade oatmeal and pear. None of the above really impressed her, particularly when fed from a spoon. She did like holding a (very ripe) stick of pear and putting it in her mouth so maybe she likes the texture of that better than puree? Although I gave her pieces of avocado and banana this morning and she didn't seem as excited about it. I keep telling her that as far as plain fruits and vegetables go, it doesn't get better than bananas and pears...

• She will now reach forward for objects in front of her when sitting on the floor. I guess it's only a matter of time until she realizes she can move up on her back legs and eventually crawl. Yikes! Also, her current favorite toy is the sorting basket (seen below) that Aunt Kristin gave her for Christmas. She doesn't like to sort, she likes to to dump it out and put all the pieces in her mouth. 

• She is loving Paisley. When she wakes up she looks around for Pais and she loves to sit next to her and "pet" her which includes actually petting and some hair grabbing. Paisley is very patient and lets Jos grab her with only an occasional face lick.

• She will look around when she hears someone and I'm starting to see evidence of her expecting things. For example when I was feeding her before bed the other night she seemed to be looking towards the door of my childhood bedroom (we're at my parent's house) because she expected Charlie to come walking through the door. (He's out of town) He often comes home from work when I'm feeding Jos before bed and she always gets a kiss on the head from him when he does.

Christmas

For Christmas, we went to my parent's house like we do every year. This year we went up on Saturday the 22nd because that day was my Dad's 60th birthday. Mom had planned a surprise party for him at a local restaurant and afterwards everyone came back to their house for some cake and coffee. We had to leave the restaurant a bit early because Josie was REALLY ready for bed. 

Happy Birthday Pop Pop!

We exchanged gifts with Kristin, Nate and Weston- below is Josie opening her first gift from Weston. She became a pro quickly.

Playing her piano from Kristin, Nate and  Weston with Aunt Megan's help

Then, on Christmas Eve, Charlie, Meg and I took Josie to see Santa. She was pretty unimpressed as you can see below. Though she sat for a full minute before crying.

Also on Christmas Eve, we opened our Christmas jammies per tradition.

And went to church.

Then on Christmas morning we opened stockings first and then (after Josie's nap) moved onto presents!

I know which one is mine- that one, that one!

My little cutie with her first stocking

Homemade sticky buns for breakfast

Josie gave everyone "brag books" of her recent pictures. They were a hit.

Showing AM her brag book

Aunt Bean and her brag book

Mommy showing Josie her new book

In her new bear hat

Our little family on Christmas morning

6 months

I can't believe our baby is half a year old! It really feels like just yesterday I was accepting the fact that I was actually in labor and telling Charlie to take me to the hospital because they had air conditioning.

This month, Josie's big milestone has been learning to sit! She now sits alone and is relatively steady. If I put the boppy behind her for support she will sit for a while and play with toys within her reach. The problem comes when they are out of her reach and then she leans for them, falls over and then can't move from that position. She prefers sitting to laying down but doesn't seem too upset (yet) when I place her on her back to play.

She is also very grabby now. (See picture to the left). No longer can I sit her on my lap at a meal because everything in front of me is in jeopardy. At my work Christmas party she took a swipe at a mini cupcake I was holding, got some icing on it and shoved it in her mouth. I freaked out, grabbed her hand and fish-hooked all the icing I could out of her mouth. Well, she's obviously my child- going straight for the icing. She has also learned how to stick her tongue out and is pretty much the most adorable thing ever. She doesn't do it on command but she'll play with her tongue by sticking it in and out, I assume running it over her gums. For a week or so I thought she was teething (and maybe she is) but there are still no teeth in sight. Who really knows?!

This month has been a little more difficult, mostly from the combination of worrying about my supply and Josie's continuing short naps. All month I would think my supply is rebounding and then I'd weigh her and she wasn't as heavy as I thought she's be and the cycle would repeat. I think FINALLY my supply had mostly increased to meet her demands. Over the last week there have been significantly less times in which I need to give her a bottle after I nurse her and the past couple days she's only gotten one after I nurse her before going to bed (I think she really excepts this bottle now).

The naps have been equally frustrating. Half an hour to 45 mins at a time, occasionally a blissful 1.5 hour nap thrown in there but with no predictability or regularity. These are not long enough for her and by the end of the day she would be a tired, hot mess. In the late afternoon/evening I would not be able to put her down or leave her immediate side without screaming and tears. Just in the last two days she seems to be FINALLY getting past the short nap development stage. Yesterday and today (her 6 month birthday) she took a 1.5 hour morning nap and then a longer 2nd nap (about an hour-ish). Josie seems to be quite the textbook baby when it comes to her sleep as this is exactly how the development of sleep is described in Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. This book has been really helpful to me in understanding what is appropriate for her age and how to help her get the sleep she needs. The book's author (a pediatrician) explains that first, babies' nighttime sleep pattern develops (done!) then the daytime sleep pattern develops, beginning with the morning nap and then the afternoon nap. So it appears she's getting her morning nap in order and then the afternoon will soon follow. Hallelujah! I actually prayed this weekend that her naps would get better soon because we had a few particularly bad, cranky evenings after she took a 30 minute nap and two 20 minute naps and THAT WAS IT. I was also very cranky by the time Charlie came home. Hopefully this recent napping development is the answer to my prayers. :)

Josie Caldwell is unimpressed

This month was also her first Christmas! We had a great time at my parent's house and for the most part everyone heeded my directions of not going overboard on Josie...though Aunt Megan did spoil her just a bit. But that's what Aunts are for. She enjoyed Christmas and slept relatively normally at my parent's house- yeah! I'm hoping to get a post about Christmas up too so I wouldn't include many pictures here.

We are also going to be introducing solid foods to Josie this week! Her 6 month appointment is on Thursday and I want to wait to get the final "go-ahead" from our pediatrician. At her 5 month appointment the doc noted that we should hold off on solids till we're sure the milk supply issue is under control. She didn't want solids replacing the essential nutrients in breast milk simply in the name of gaining weight. So on Thursday  Josie will be getting her first food: avocado! I also have some winter squash and pumpkin already pureed and ready to go in the freezer. We received both through out CSA and I was running out of ways I wanted to prepare squash! Hopefully she likes squash because we have quite a few baby servings. Food and nutrition are both interesting and important to me so I'm very excited to be able to introduce Josie to solid food. I hope that we are able to give her a base for enjoying a wide range of foods. I was apparently a good eater as a baby but then became very picky as I got older. I have since greatly expanded my palate and there aren't many things I don't like anymore (I ate and enjoyed green beans at Christmas dinner. And I would now list kale as one of my top favorite foods). I hope Josie will learn to love many healthy foods and not inherit my previously picky palate.

Heart. melting.

Our photo session for this month was a family affair as you'll see in the pictures. I love the one above and a couple we got with Paisley. Pais is so good with Josie and just takes the random fur pulls and lip grabs in stride, only occasionally "striking back" with a face lick.

6 Months

Milestones: Sitting up by herself, sticking her tongue out, saying more consonant sounds
Likes: Bath time, Paisley, funny faces (especially puffing out your cheeks), being kissed on her neck while making a "snarfing" noise (this almost always gets a laugh)
Dislikes: Being tired, being in the back of the car by herself, being in the stroller without something to play with
Weight: Around 13.5 pounds (will know officially on Thursday). She's a skinny mini!

There's that tongue!

Sitting so pretty

Mommy's got my foot!

Our baby and our furbaby

Face lick!

"you said WHAT?!"

5 months

First, before we get to the meat of this post, can we please just discuss this picture:

Apparently, she's gearing up to support us in our old age via a modeling career. What a little nut!

Smiling at Mommy

Anyway, Josie is now 5 months old! I have a feeling that as the months go on I will keep saying this but this month has been my favorite so far. She is so interactive, yet I can still lay her down and walk away for a sec without her getting into anything (since she's not crawling yet).

She has been sleeping through the night since around 3.5 months but now it is extremely consistent. She now rarely wakes up after we put her down and if she does she is easily able to soothe herself back to sleep unless something is wrong (like a dirty diaper). (I'm knocking on wood all over the place right now because I'm pretty sure the fastest way for this to stop is to write about it in a public forum.) She goes down between 7 and 7:30 and sleeps until between 7 and 8 am the next morning and YES, IT IS GLORIOUS. Also, if you think Charlie and I are some kind of baby sleep geniuses, I assure you, we are not. Our only real intervention was to unswaddle her and give her a couple nights to find her thumb, (which involved some crying on both parent's and baby's parts) and she basically took it from there. Her daytime naps are still relatively short although they are starting to slowly get longer. Some are still predictably 30ish minutes but if I'm lucky I get at least one 1- 1.5 hour nap a day. The books say by the end of 6 months that she should have gone through "nap consolidation", meaning she'll transition from napping 3-4 times a day for 30-45 minutes to (hopefully) taking 2 longer naps and possibly an evening catnap. Some have suggested that she's just a born catnapper but I don't agree. When she only sleeps 30-45 minutes and gets up, it's obvious she's still tired. The book "experts" state that this is still a developmental thing and that while you can "force" a baby to go to sleep, you can't force them to sleep longer. So, for the most part we been going with the flow and thanking the Lord that she sleeps so well at night. We are working on her soothing herself to sleep for naps, meaning we've started consistently putting her down drowsy but awake (at home, if we're at friend's house all bets are off) and letting her fuss a bit if she doesn't fall right asleep. This a mixed bag. Sometimes she rolls right over and goes to sleep, sometimes she lets out one "protest whine" and then plays till she falls asleep, sometimes she fusses for a good 5-10 minutes before finally sucking her thumb and falling asleep.

Eyes! Mouth!

Whew, that was a lot about sleep, but at this age that is still what most people ask about when they find out we have an infant! At her five month appointment last week she was 12 lbs, 10.5 ozs. This wasn't a full check up, the doctor had asked that we come back in for a weight check when we came in for her two shots. Though she had gained weight since her 4 month check up, it was only 5.5 ozs, less than they like to see. Because of this she is now only on the 10% growth curve. This itself is not a concern but the doctor wants to see her gain some more weight since for the first couple months she was consistently in the 50th percentile. I mentioned last month that I was working on getting my milk supply up and I have been working hard at it (pumping often- including getting up in the middle of the night, taking supplements like fenugreek and a prescription prescribed by my midwife). My supply has increased, however the doctor wants me to supplement Josie's feedings with some additional ounces of pumped milk so that we can be sure to she is gaining weight appropriately. So far, it's working out, despite it being extra work for me. But, since breastfeeding is so important to me it really doesn't bother me much and I have been functioning well despite continuing to wake up for 1/2 hour each night to pump.

standing with help

She's not eating solids yet and we don't plan to start them with her until close to 6 months, which the doctor was still in favor of, despite her weight "issues". I have a lot of people seem confused as to why we haven't started her on solids yet, which I find surprising (that so many people are asking me). If you're interested- there are a number of reasons! We're big believers in eating "real" foods- aka foods in which you can identify and pronounce every ingredient and that don't contain weird chemicals and additives (basically almost nothing that comes in a box. This isn't to say we're perfect eaters! We ate Krispy Kreme donuts this weekend for crying out loud). So we want to feed Josie foods that are "real" AND have a great deal of nutritional value for her growing body. While rice cereal is safe for babies at 4 months, it doesn't have tons of nutritional value and therefore, unless there was a medical reason for her to have it , such as reflux (this helps some babies' tummy troubles by keeping things more settled), we decided to bypass it and stick with only breastmilk. Also, there are numerous research studies that demonstrate waiting to introduce solids until 6 months can reduce a child's chances of developing a food allergy and reduces the chances that mom's milk supply will diminish due to it being replaced by solid food (already dealing with supply issues- no need to add more in!). Finally, it is recommended that babies get the majority of their nutrition from breastmilk or formula for the first year, so food should be treated as "exploratory" at it's introduction. So, if you were wondering...that is why! As always- not a judgement on what other parent's due- this is just what's right for us. I AM really looking forward to starting solids with her next month, while at the same time glad to have waited as it can also be (yet another) time consuming endeavor. We plan to give her avocado as her first food- lots of great healthy fats for the skinny babe!

Other developments this month include being able to sit with support and using both hands to grab objects. She likes to stand while someone is holding her hands and her reaction to everything is to lean forward with her mouth open to explore whatever it is. She wants to explore everything with her mouth and she will often lean into my face with her mouth open when I stand her up on my lap (it's adorable). We can finally notice some chunk on her little baby thighs, though she is still a little skinny mini. She prefers to be on her back and when she is placed on her stomach she will often roll over pretty quickly. She's still pretty lazy about rolling from back to stomach even if she really wants a toy that's just out of reach. I'm trying to not just give her whatever she wants and let her struggle a bit to reach things so she learns she can move to get what she wants. She LOVES her baths and as soon as we put her in, she kicks her legs and splashes all around.

Girl-ing up a neutral outfit

She's still in size 3 month clothes though I just noticed that the 3 month stuff is getting a little snug length-wise. This is somewhat difficult because it is no where near to big width-wise, especially around her shoulders. To accommodate her length, some of her tops now look like she had a starring role in Flashdance, with the "off the shoulder" 80s style.

This month we had her dedicated at our church. A dedication is similar to a baptism except there is no baptizing. (Ha!) It's a more casual (in my opinion) ceremony in which the parents pledge to raise their child in a Christian home in front of the congregation, who pledge to help them. Our faith is very important to us and we plan to teach Josie about it and we pray she would grow up to follow the Lord as well. Charlie's sister, Sharon and her family came into town for the occasion and were able to meet Josie for the first time! This month also included her first Thanksgiving, and though she didn't indulge in any turkey or stuffing, she seemed to have a great time.

I smell something funny

Smiles!

5 months

Firsts: Meeting Aunt Sharon and Uncle Barry, Thanksgiving
Looking Forward to: First Christmas (!!!), introducing solids
Milestones: Found her feet and chews on them, rolling more often, grabbing with both hands
Likes: Eating, baths, staring at faces, chewing on things
Dislikes: Being by herself, sitting in the backseat of the car without someone