Ellie Grace: 8 months

                                                     
Our little nugget is 8 months old today. Some of the highlights from the past month have been:
-going on walks & to library time with our friends Ashley and June.
-going to First Thursday downtown, & First Friday in Newberg
-going yard saling every Friday with friends
-A trip to Eugene to hang with family
-A trip to Bend over Memorial day weekend to visit Jake's grandparents
-going on a hike in the gorge (Angel's Rest) for father's day.
Despite our consistent efforts each evening to get Ellie to eat solids, she still would shut her mouth and refuse. We tried bananas (5/20), green beans (5/27), sweet potatoes (5/29), mum mums (6/9), carrots (6/10), and mangoes (6/17). With no progress, we decided to take a break for about a week in hopes that her interest in eating would grow. Eating after the break has changed slightly in that she will now eat a mum mum (that we dip in some of her food) and maybe take a couple bites if we're lucky. We will just have to keep at it I guess (can't wait for solids to be consistent in her diet so she stops having blowouts all the time!). In the last month we introduced water from a sippy cup, and she also takes great delight in drinking it from a straw.
As far as sleep is concerned, she had a rough patch that started during our trip to Bend over memorial day weekend. She would wake up multiple times a night. Even if we rocked her back to sleep and tried to lay her gently in her crib, she would spring back awake as soon as her head hit the mattress. It made for a tired mommy and daddy for a couple weeks. I am happy to report that she has again fallen back into her "norm" of sleeping through the night from about 8:30pm-6am. She's still on the 4ish hour schedule during the day, eating again at 9 am, 1 pm, 5pm, and 8 pm. Naps are usually from 11-1, and 3-5.
It's been a joy to continue to see her personality develop. She gets super excited when we go in to get her after her naps, and she loves music, songs, and sound. Some of my favorite times with her are right after her 6 am feeding when she falls right to sleep afterward on my shoulder and I get to rock and snuggle her until I feel like putting her back down in her crib (I usually have to force myself). Little things I love are the way she turns her binky round and round as she nods off to sleep, how she rubs her eyes when shes getting tired, the way she'll be playing and all of a sudden just look up and smile at Jake or I, how she kicks her legs like crazy when she gets excited about something,  and the fact that her hair is finally getting long enough to have a little "bedhead" when she gets up from her naps.
A huge milestone for Ellie was when she started crawling (6/11). She had been rocking on her knees for a couple weeks, and then just started slowly moving forward one hand/knee at a time. By 6/14 she was crawling across the room with no breaks.