Ellie Grace: 7 months

7 Months! We're on the upswing to a year already. I swear I blinked and this last month flew by. It has been a sweet month of spending time as a family and watching Ellie learn as she discovers her surroundings. There are more nights than not that we hold our sweet sleeping little girl in our arms and say "When did she get so big?" She's become a pro at sitting up and playing for extended periods of time, and rolls and scootches around (often needing to be rescued from under a coffee table or chair). She started eating solids (5/4), rode in a shopping cart (4/30), sleeping in her crib at night (4/29), went swimming at the pool (4/30), and "waves" (probably just opening and closing her hand to her, but it's still cute). One morning (5/6) she started babbling noises that we hadn't heard before and they sounded an awful lot like mamamamama. I took a quick video on my shoddy phone, and Jake confirmed it. Just a couple days ago (5/19) we heard her start saying dadddaada. We thought her giggles were awesome, but that almost took the cake. We went to storytime at the library, on lots of walks, to First Thursday in downtown Portland, First Friday in Newberg, to the zoo with her cousins, aunt & nonna, to Eugene, yardsaling, and celebrated mother's day by driving to the beach for the day as a family. When we started solids, I started giving it to her in between her 5:00 and 8:00 feeding (at kind of dinner time). Ellie slurped down rice cereal when we first gave it to her, but trying peas (mixed with rice cereal and breastmilk-5/15) and even applesauce (mixed in with the peas, rice cereal and breastmilk-5/18) has been a different story. She keeps her lips pursed and we can barely sneak in any bites. As soon as it's in she makes horrible gagging faces and spits it out. She's having no issues with growing (we're talking belly & leg rolls for miles) so we're not worried about it. Sleep wise she was sleeping through the night from about 8:00ish to 6:30ish, then eating and going back to sleep until 9 for the longest time. During our visit to Eugene a couple days ago she started waking up at midnight and 4 and a few times in between and not settling back in unless I fed her (usually at the 4:00 wake up). We're hoping now that we're back home she'll fall back into her old routine. She's still on a 4 hour routine as far as eating goes- she eats, is awake for 2 hours, sleeps for (roughly) 2 hours, then repeats. It's been working out great for us! We love our little girl and look forward to another great month with her!

A Week of Firsts

This week we had the joy of watching Ellie as she experienced a few things for the first time. On Monday night (4/29) she slept in her crib during the night for the first time. She had been sleeping in there for naps for quite awhile, but was still in our room in the pack'n'play (for convenience sake and so we didn't have to heat two rooms through the night) during the night. She started sleeping in her crib a few nights earlier but Jake wasn't quite ready to have her so far away so we camped out on her floor. She's made the transition pretty easily although right now she's in the habit of waking up at midnight & wanting her binky, and then waking up again at 5:30am to be fed.  Not terrible, but not ideal either. (snuggling with me in the morning)

Tuesday (4/30) she rode in the seat part of the shopping cart for the first time. Aside from her trying to suck on the nasty red strap, she seemed pretty stable.

Today (5/4) was super sunny- we're talking like 82 degrees so we took Ellie to take a little dip in our friends' pool. It wasn't much different than taking a bath (she loved it), but a fun introduction if only because of a cute swimsuit and sunhat nonetheless.

Today we also introduced solids into Ellie's diet. I whipped her up some organic brown rice cereal in our vitamix (mixed with some breast milk), and she seemed to really enjoy it. We offered it to her in the evening, between her normal feedings and she slurped up spoonful after spoonful.

 On top of all this, she's been rolling around like crazy and sitting like a pro these days. Even though I get a little sentimental with each milestone, knowing my tiny baby is turning into a little kid, what a joy it is to watch her as she grows!