Ladybug 9 Months

Ok, 9.5 months.  Ok, almost 10 months.  I also definitely missed 8 months.  Life is crazy, what can I say.

She is finally sleeping through the night!! And it is so very nice.  Words cannot express how awesome it is to get sleep almost every night.  She is sitting up, crawling everywhere, pulling up, and has tried to stand unassisted twice that we have seen.  I would be totally fine if she would walk soon!  That way we could all go outside and play and I wouldn't have to worry about her being on the cold ground.   Her sister and brother walked at 14 months and 12 months so we'll see...

She still put everything (I mean everything) in her mouth.  It is so frustrating!  I just can't keep everything off the floor with a 2 year old and a 3 year old running around!  She will find tissues, pieces of paper, crayons, etc.  We pretty much have banned all toys with small parts for the time being, but they still leave stuff laying around (like tissues!).

She is eating pretty good.  Still doing mostly pureed.  She enjoys eating and has yet to refuse anything.  She is nursing maybe 4 times a day, maybe 5.  I don't actually keep track and it's liberating.

She is still pretty small, but now gaining weight the way she is supposed to so that is a relief.  We will take her again next month.

She still isn't very demonstrative.  Well, that's not quite true.  She smiles allllll the time.  She just doesn't laugh out loud very often, but neither did Autumn.  If you *try* to make her laugh, she will, not just on her own.  She does have an adorable laugh though :)  She rarely cries.  Pretty much only when she's tired or hungry, mostly tired.  She is a mama's girl.  I'm enjoying that for the time being.

She has started to get super wiggly on the changing table.  That's not annoying at all.  She kicks her legs up and pulls on your hands with her hands.  I don't know if I noted it before, so I'm going to note it now so it makes it into her baby book when I finally do it, but when she was younger she would constantly cross her ankles when she was on the changing table.  All the time, her left ankle would cross over her right.  We would have to unwind them a lot during changing!  That is a sweet memory.  

She has lots of hair and so far no curls.  50/50 shot with that.  She is a beautiful baby and I am so glad she is ours.

Too much flash (squinty eyes!), but look at those beautiful sister smiles!  

Don't mind the mess ;)

Ladybug 7 Months

Her first Halloween costume!

That child you see above?  I am totally obsessed with her.  We all are. She is nothing short of a delightful, joyous, overwhelming blessing to this family.  It is amazing how much love one heart can hold.  It also boggles the mind that people wonder if having multiple children detracts from the family unit somehow.  

She is starting to sleep better at night.  Not fully arrived or anything, but getting better.  She only woke up twice last night (11 pm and 5:30 am).  She is crawling now!!!  She still doesn't sit up though.  Is that normal?  She enjoys chewing on everything and anything so we have to be SUPER diligent around here about picking up after the {almost} two year old hits up (aka destroys) a room. 

She loves to eat, eat, eat!  Nurse or table food.  

Finally took her to her doctor's appointment and she is a tiny thing!  But she hasn't always been so...so we have to take her back in a couple weeks to make sure she is gaining weight.  If not they are going to do a bone scan to make sure her bones are growing.  She went from being in the 46% to the 11% for weight and from the 79% to 50% for height.  I'm sure she's fine.  I mean, I'm 90% sure.  I can't help but being a tiny bit nervous.  We have tried to add formula to encourage weight gain but she just will not take a bottle. It's crazy how much she won't do it.  If we do ever have to put her on formula, it  is going to be a struggle.  

I found a way to make her laugh so that is fun.  Before she would just smile really big but now she actually giggles if someone does this certain thing.  It's kind of like you "scare" her...you just pull back and then rush forward and make a funny noise and she loves it.

Her favorite thing to do is to crawl around and explore everything right now.  Makes cooking dinner a challenge since I used to be able to leave her and she would stay in one spot! I try to stick her in her exersaucer while I do dinner. The big kids always watch a video during dinner prep.  

She is still very easy and very happy and I love her so very very much. 

Ladybug 6 Months

Half a year already! Make it stop!  I can't keep up!

This is the sweetest, snuggliest, most kissable, most huggable bundle of baby perfectness that you ever will meet.

We took a 2 week vacation back East.  She did stellar.  However, before we left she was sleeping 8-12 hours most nights. Now?  Up every 3.  Also, she is having a heckuva time going to sleep at night (not in the middle of the night, but at the beginning bedtime period).  It is wearing me out.  If I don't feed her, she screams and I cannot handle that.  So, that is no bueno.  Not sure what to do about that...

I finally started feeding her rice cereal and bananas this week.  I thought about trying baby led weaning, but decided against it for 2 reasons.  1.) My older two were fed on home made purees and eat just fine.  2.)  My son still smears food in his hair and I didn't want to deal with 2 insanely messy faces 3 times a day.  I am hoping that by the time Eliza is feeding herself, Caleb won't be quite so messy.  This girl child LOVES to eat!  She hosses it down! You know how most babies when first eating pureed kind of let it drip out of their mouth?  This girl sucks her spoon so she doesn't miss a drop.  I'm so happy :)  

She is still nursing (no bottle, no formula).  I wish she would take a bottle, but no such luck as of yet.  She does this thing when she nurses that is so funny.  I will try to explain it.  She flips on her belly and kind of sits up so she is practically sitting up facing me while she nurses!  It is so random and totally her own move.  I've never seen another baby do that before!

But no, she can not sit up on her own yet which makes the nursing thing even more funny :)

She still rarely laughs, but smiles alllll the time.  She has two smiles.  One is pictured above.  It is the sweetest smile of all time and everyone absolutely loves it.  Then she has her big smile.  Where she opens her mouth really big and shows all her teethless gums.  Gorgeous!  The right side of her mouth has always quirked up when she shows her big smile.  I am interested to see how that develops as she ages. 

We missed our 6 month appointment (ok, I never called to make it) so I won't have stats on her until she is almost 7 months.  Shame on mommy.  (But, not really, because who really cares?).    

She now loves baby toys.  Rattles, chewy things, musical toys, you name it.  She is taken with it all :)  She is such a fun little baby! So easy going (except at night!) and so wonderful to be around.  I wish I could inject a little Eliza into everyone's circle.  This world would be a better place if I could. 

Ladybug 5 Months

These are seriously coming way too fast.  It's really too late and I'm really too tired to be doing this right now, but I am so overwhelmed with all these thousands of little things I need to do that I have to do something or I will never go to sleep.  Not only do I have thousands of little things to do, it feels like my husband is never here!!  Of course, he is here sometimes, it just doesn't feel that way.

SO, 5 months old!

She is still exclusively breast fed.  We haven't been able to get that child on a bottle, but we haven't tried very hard either.  

She takes 2 solid naps a day with a mini 30 min nap thrown in there most days.
She is not sleeping through the night all the time, but she has once or twice. I think that is the same as last month.

She rolls over both ways all the time now.

She is still a very happy, content baby.

I can now drink dairy without it affecting her so yay for mommy.

She does not like it when I sneeze!  She actually cries over it!

So, this is seriously the worst entry EVER!!  I feel like a bad mom, gah.  I'm sure there are a billion details I'm leaving out.  Sometimes I go back through my facebook posts to see what's happened.  I clearly need to do that for this post!

Ladybug 4 Months

This is going up late by 11 days.  I almost forgot to do it.  I am barely blogging these days, but I want to keep up with her monthly posts since I will need to go back and fill in her baby book when I have more time.

We took two trips last month.  One was to Denver to see my brother graduate and one was to California to have a girls trip with my mom, my sister, and a bunch of my mom's friends.  We flew both places and she did pretty great.  Really, no complaints from me.  She did, however, get totally off her schedule both times, and is not anywhere near sleeping through the night like she was a month ago.  It's all good though.   In time :)

She also has cleaned up her messy eating ways.  She just doesn't dribble anymore.  I don't know why, but I'll take it.  She does drool a lot though!  First one of mine to drool.  I hope it doesn't last for months and months like some kids because it's kind of gross when I go to pick her up and her dress is drenched!  Time to bust out the bibs I guess!

She found her feet but isn't too interested in them.  Sometimes when she is laying on her back, she will lift her hand up and just stare at her fingers.  It is so funny.

She still the sweetest baby ever.  All the girls at Optimom (my work out group) go on about how easy she is...I'll ask how she did and they'll say "why do you even ask?"  So, quite a change from my baby man who still cries every single time I leave him!  However, Caleb laughs louder and longer than either one of his sisters.  Elizabeth has only laughed 3 times her entire life that I know of!  Caleb started cackling at about 2 months of age!!  So, there is good and not so good with all of us :)

Elizabeth's cry is so quiet that I have to use the baby monitor at all times.  It might be the quietest cry of all time.  Unless she gets really worked up (which happens when I forget to turn the monitor on so she cries in her room for a long time), then she screams bloody murder.  So I know her lungs work just fine...she just has to get really mad to use them to their full capacity.

We went to the doctor yesterday and she is 46% for weight (13ish pounds) and 79% for height (can't remember, but it's written down somewhere).  A little lighter and a little longer than Autumn at that age, but pretty close to her sister's stats.  All my kids are TALL (95% 99% 79%)!  2 of them are also thin, one is not ;)

No picture this month because I'm lazy!

Baby book details:
Favorite toy: Pink kitty cat rattle, or watching her older siblings, or mommy making funny faces at her
Although she doesn't laugh much, she smiles allllll the time.
Dislikes:  I seriously can't think of one.  Loud noises maybe?
Still can't tolerate dairy via breast milk
Uses the bumpo on occasion and does fine except it makes her spit up longer than 5 or so minutes.  Her core gets lazy ;)

Ladybug Two Months

How is the gorgeous child two months old?  I still think my heart might burst from loving her so much.

She still rarely cries.
If I drink milk, her belly gets upset.  (Same as the other two)
She smiles!
She coos.
All 4 of us are completely obsessed, especially Autumn.  And me.  And Chris.  And Caleb.

Now, details to be later recorded in her baby book (I have barely begun Caleb's!  I'm SOOO behind!)
Sleeping
She isn't on a strict schedule and every day it is a bit different, but she roughly naps 4-5 times a day and her awake time each round is about one hour.  When we are not at home, she sleeps less and does OK with it.  She is super flexible!  At night she wakes up once or twice to eat.  Here is the insane thing about that.  I don't wish for her to sleep through the night.  I mean, sure, it will be nice to get sleep, but I am LOVING her as a baby.  Not struggling with postpartum depression this round has been freaking AMAZING (another post about that sometime!). I just want her to stay little for as long as possible.  My 3 year on the other hand drives me to red fury waking up all the time...she woke up more times than Eliza last night.

Eating
She nurses every 2-3 hours.  She is going for longer stretches when we are at home and gets really great naps in, but on the days we are out and about I tend to nurse her more often (less sleep, extra fussiness, more comfort needed?  Not sure, but she eats more often when we aren't at home).

Playing
Hmmmm...not so much.  She does smile a lot now when someone makes eye contact with her.  The other night Chris was holding her and I came over to say hi and as soon as she heard my voice, she perked up!  It made my entire month!!

She brings so much to our family and I absolutely could not imagine life without this beautiful girl!

Ladybug One Month

My  littlest little is one month old. 

She is the most precious baby ever.  Except for my other two of course.  

I just love her so much my heart might burst.  

She rarely cries which is quite a change from the other two!  Autumn had colic and Caleb still cries all the time at 16 months.  

She is a little peanut.  Still in newborn clothes which is also a change from my other two.  Autumn is a giantess and Caleb's nickname is Baby Hulk.   

She eats good and sleeps pretty well.  She sleeps better during the day than at night...why is that?  I'm not complaining though...she has been really easy so far.  

If I were to guess, I would say she is an "Angel Baby" according to the Baby Whisperer personality types (Angel, Textbook, Grumpy, Spirited, Touchy).  Autumn is textbook and Caleb is touchy.  

She is so pretty and easy going.  Both of the big kids love her (thank goodness!) and enjoy kissing her and holding her.  She takes it all in stride :)

I feel so very very blessed to be this precious child's mama.   

Oh, and I call her my Ladybug...hence the title of this post ;)