Emma's 7 month update

Today marks Emma's 7-month birthday, and to make this day even more special...it's Easter!  I'll have more to write about Easter later, but for now, let's recap what has been going on with Emma in the past month.

Firsts:

-Rolling from tummy to back (on a regular basis)
-Swing ride at the park (yesterday)

-Lots of new solid foods (see Meal time section for the full list)

-First time drinking from a sippy cup

Growth and Development

Emma is still a super cute chunky baby.  Her thighs have the cutest big rolls around the tops of them.  She wears size 9 month clothes very well right now, although we've encountered a few pairs of 9-month pants that are a bit snug on her round midsection.  She's still wearing size 3 pampers diapers, and while the size 2's would be way too small (to get around her thighs and probably her belly now too), the 3's may not fit her well because she's still having a lot of blow outs.  I thought they might diminish now that she's on solid foods and, well, her poo has gotten more solid too.  But alas, she still blows out her back fairly commonly.  Therefore, most of her size 9-month clothes/sleepers may very well have a permanent bit of yellow stain on their backs (sometimes it is very hard to get those stains out!).

We took Emma to the pediatric dermatologist at the end of March and low and behold he prescribed an ointment for her that finally cleared up her eczema rash on her chest and tummy!  I'm a little upset her primary doctor dragged his feet on sending us to the dermatologist and/or didn't prescribe something himself, because she could have had that rash gone a long time ago rather than dealing with it for over two months. 

So glad she has her super soft and smooth rash-free skin back!

She is rolling and rolling and rolling (sometimes I get the rawhide song in my head...), and then pivoting, and doing more rolling.  It wasn't long after her 6-month birthday that she figured out how to push herself back onto her back from her tummy.  On top of all the rolling, I think she's even moving herself forward in a bit of an army crawl now.  She certainly moves her legs the right way to do that (bending one and bringing it up beside her), but maybe hasn't quite gotten her arms coordinated with her body yet to make much headway in the forward direction.  Nonetheless, if she wants a toy in the distance, she can get to it.  And forget having a blanket on the floor anymore.  If she's not rolled or moved off of it, she's grabbing it and rolling herself up in it! Time to just keep the carpets VERY clean. 

Emma is also sitting very well now.  While I still don't trust her to throw herself back suddenly (and therefore hit the back of her head hard on the ground), I can let her sit unassisted for quite some time.  If I'm not nearby to help catch her when she does throw herself backward, I leave her boppy pillow around her and she's fine.  Yesterday I think she was practicing the throwing herself back and then sitting back forward movements, because she kept doing it over and over again.  I was sitting behind her so she didn't fall all the way back, but she kept repeating it and then pulling forward.  Kind of like a baby's version of sit ups.  She also sits up straighter now and doesn't lean forward so much to support herself while sitting (what I used to call the tripod where she'll push on her hands leaning forward in the sitting position).

She is still a grabber, at my hair or anything within her reach.  She also can pass objects between her two hands now too.

Meal time

Emma is having 5 oz bottles of breastmilk every 3 hours during the day and then solid foods for three meals a day.  So far she's eaten (introduced in this order): rice cereal, sweet potatoes, peas, pears, carrots, apples, oatmeal cereal.  I hope to introduce something new today...likely pumpkin.  She seems to like everything so far, but sometimes she'll eat a certain food better than others.  Her liking for peas come and go and also for cereal when it's served by itself (not mixed into one of the other fruit of veggies, which is often how I served it to her mixed together for dinner).  Of all of them I think her initial reaction to pears was the funniest...they must have been tart for her.  She scrunched up her nose and looked so confused after each bite, but kept taking more bites so it wasn't enough of a problem to keep her from trying more.

Yummy sweet potatoes!

After being on solids for just about one month now, she is now getting quite good at eating from the spoon.  She opens her mouth wide and sometimes even leans forward into the "bite" of food.  It helps because if she doesn't open her mouth it makes it more clear to me now that she just doesn't want (more) food.  Emma's also getting more distracted during nursing times. Evan will come running past and so Emma will quickly look in that direction....ouch!  Need I say more?

Emma is also a noisy eater.  I don't mean she slurps her food or anything like that.  I mean she makes noises (grunts, hums, moans almost) while she eats!  I have no idea why she does this, but she sticks her arms out forward most times (think Frankenstein) and then hums away while I'm feeding her solids.   Sometimes she grabs at the spoon and helps me feed it to her.  About her vocalizations, in general she doesn't make many sounds yet (i.e., no consonants or anything), but she blows raspberries and hums/moans, and the latter is a regular occurrence during meal time.

Sleep time

Emma's bedtime is between 7:30-8pm and then she usually wakes for the day around 8am.  Lately she's been going through the night until 6am without a feeding (when I'll do a half feed for her and put her back down for the rest of the morning).  It's nice to not be woken in the early morning hours anymore, but going just that much longer without nursing her makes me more uncomfortable, and on days when my alarm is set for 6:30am, waking to feed her at 6am robs me of that last 30 min of sleep.  There is something precious to me about those last few minutes of sleep before the alarm goes off and knowing that I will not get back to sleep after feeding her kind of stinks.  But I think it's better than the 4am wake ups in the long run.

Now, while she has been sleeping quite well, going the whole night really without a feed, she's started having some trouble around the 10pm-midnight timeframe.  She seems to wake up in that time window every night fussing and whining a bit.  Some nights we think it's teething and so we give her ibuprofen, others we try to just calm her, but sometimes she can be awake for 1-2 hours during this time!?  One night I ended up nursing her back to sleep just because it had been over 2 hours of her fussing and we didn't' know what else to do at that point. A few nights ago, we tried to preempt the wake up (presumably due to teething pains) by giving her ibuprofen at bedtime.  Sadly, that did not work.  She still woke up at 11pm, however she went back to sleep after all I did was go into her room and shush her (she didn't even see me because I never even leaned over the crib).  So perhaps she's starting some separation anxiety?   Time will tell...  But the one exception to this is that just last night she slept all the way from 8pm to 6am straight, without any wake ups!  She did not go back to sleep after 6am, though, but hey she went the whole night!  Yippee!

During the day, she still usually takes three naps per day, unless her afternoon nap is really long then just two.  She goes down for them pretty good, although occasionally she'll fuss herself to sleep for 5-10 minutes. 

Favorites

Toys: Stacking rings, Sophie the Giraffe, her "baby guitar", aqua-colored dangly leg teddy bear toy

 

Books: Touch and Feel Kangaroo (she loves touching the pages in all of her books now, probably hoping for something furry in them) and Babies on the Bus (a colorful cute rendition of the Wheels on the Bus) are probably her favorites.  I also read Counting Kisses, On the night you were born, Where ever you are my love will find you, I love you through and through, Goodnight Moon, and Snug as a Hug, and a few others to her often as well.

Play time

Emma spends her play time on the floor or in her jumperoo.  We try not to put her in other seats that prevent her from moving unless it's meal time or we're out and about and she's in the car seat/stroller.  If Evan's watching TV, she'll spend a good bit of time watching it too.  Not my first choice, but there is only so much you can do sometimes.  

We're trying to spend more time outside lately now that the weather is warming up: taking walks to the park and picnicing in our backyard or at the park.  I need to get Emma some good shoes that fit so that we can start letting her crawl around and play outside too.  At least we got her in the swing yesterday and she did well.  I wasn't sure if she was sitting up steady enough or not, but she sat in there well.  She was a bit unsure of the swinging motion, but she didn't cry or seem to mind.  She certainly enjoyed being able to watch her brother swinging next to her!

Daddy always can make her smile so cute!  Here we are about to talk a walk outside.