Ten and a Half Months!

Merry Christmas (belated)!  I hope to get a Christmas post up at some point, but since we all know I can't get it together enough to even get a monthly Allie update up on time, we'll see if that actually happens.  Allie is napping right now, so I'm going to try and get this update out.

Allie is ten ten and a half months old!  Wow, I can't believe she's almost a year old, so weird.  I'm really late with this update and I honestly can't remember what's happened before ten months and in the last two weeks, so I'll just update you on where we're at right now.

First off, the ten month photo shoot was a complete disaster, because little-miss-can't-sit-still would not cooperate.

Why yes, the sticker is stuck to my leg in this photo!

Right after I wrote my nine month update, Allie started babbling with her bababa, dadada, and all that, so it was nice to not have to worry about that being an issue, since I was kind of concerned she wasn't doing that yet when I wrote the nine month update.  It seems like with a lot of her developmental milestones, all I have to do is express concern about it and she goes ahead and does it.  I will admit she has said "dada" a lot, but I am not ready to call that her first world since Greg is typically no where in the vicinity when she is saying it, it just seems to be general babble.  Still, Greg likes to give me crap about how he won the "dada" vs. "mama" first word battle.  I actually wouldn't mind if she did look right at him and call him dada.  That would be so cute :)  Allie is very into Clyde now too, so it wouldn't surprise me if her "da" is really directed at Clyde, trying to say "dog" (which was my first word!).  She also really likes rubber ducks, so it could be "duck".

I feel like Allie is getting super close to walking.  She easily stands and can move while holding on to things.  She's also super fast in her walker and is getting good at turning around and moving in multiple directions.  I think she'll be walking by the time she's a year old if not sooner.  She also stands without holding on to things a lot now, so she's definitely testing the waters.  I think she'll be walking by a year if not sooner.

As of nine months Allie still had no teeth!  This surprised me, because she's been pretty much on target with most milestones, and this was definitely late.  About a week and a half ago one of her daycare teachers pointed at her mouth and said "I think she's teething now", because she was doing something funny with her mouth.  Sure enough, I felt around in her mouth and felt a sharp edge poking through on one of her lower middle teeth, so it's finally happening now.  She's doing ok with it.  The other day my parents were watching her while I was at work and she completely lost it for about three hours, and I ended up leaving work early to rescue them.  I stopped at Walgreens on my way home and bought every teething product they had.  I think half of it was that she just wanted me to hold and comfort her and no one else would do.  Poor kiddo.  Tylenol, chilled pacifiers, and teething tablets seem to be the most helpful out of everything we've tried.

Like I said, sleep has been a little bit disrupted lately due to teething.  She was pretty consistently sleeping through the night right before the first tooth poked through, but then got thrown off.  I have had some nights where I've gone in if she seems particularly upset and others where I've let her cry and settle herself back to sleep when it seems like she would.  I feel like I can never really decide what to do.  I want to be consistent, but don't want her to suffer alone if she needs comforting.  We started putting Allie to bed a little earlier, because it seemed like putting her to bed later didn't help much with making her sleep later, so she might as well go to bed earlier and get the sleep on the front end.  Typically she goes down by about 7:15pm, then can be up anywhere from like 5:15-7am.  Most mornings she's up more in the 5:30am range, which kind of sucks.  She usually takes two naps- one in the morning around 10am- that can be 1/2 hour to 1 1/2 hours, then an afternoon nap around 2ish that is about the same length.  Daycare tells me she's not one of the better nappers, and I agree.

Feeding is going well.  She eats three meals a day.  A typical day of feeding looks like this:

6:30am: Nurse.

8:15am: oatmeal cereal mixed with applesauce or mashed banana, sometimes a handful of sliced blueberries (her favorite food by a landslide)

10am: Bottle or nurse

12pm: A level two baby food or pouch if she's at daycare or out, maybe chunks of sweet potato and banana and/or whole grain cracker with some almond butter if she's home.

1:30pm: Bottle or nurse

Some kind of afternoon snack maybe (cheerios, diced fruit, etc).

4pm: Bottle or nurse

5:45pm: Dinner of rotisserie chicken, butternut squash chunks, coconut milk yogurt.

7pm: Nurse.

She sometimes does have a middle of the night nurse session, and once in a while she'll have a 5:15am and 7:15am nurse session if she wakes up really early and doesn't eat much at the first session and I want to top her off before daycare.  

We met with the allergist and confirmed Allie has a milk and egg allergy.  She can have milk or eggs cooked in stuff like baked goods, but other than that, it's a no go for now.  We have a bottle of Benedryl and an epi pen for her just in case, but I think she'll grow out of it, but it's still less than ideal.  I think we're going to end up doing a combination of different milks- hemp, almond, soy, coconut, when she hits a year.  We'll probably see what she likes and use different ones for home and daycare since she can't have nut milk there.

Allie can now clap, wave, hug, and understands more of what we're saying, as far as we can tell.  Everyone says she has a lot of personality and she constantly cracks us up!

I keep saying every day she's starting to look and act more like a little girl all the time, and less like a baby.  The daycare teachers told me she's been kissing one of the boys!  Whoa, slow down little girl!

Likes: BLUEBERRIES, butternut squash, my phone, bells, Clyde, rubber ducks, me, my mom, waving, clapping, cuddling, practicing walking.

Dislikes:  Being strapped into pretty much anything (stroller, carseat, etc...), being confined in her play yard, crib, or Pack N Play, being changed, not being able to see me if I have to run to the bathroom or upstairs for a minute.

She's usually in 9M clothes now, and still in size 3 diapers.  I don't see that changing anytime soon.  I have no idea about her weight or height.  I probably won't find out til her year check up.  I would guess maybe 17 lbs, but I usually guess wrong.

Anyway, life is pretty good.  It's super hectic, and she's getting more fun, but also more challenging as she grows.  As usual, there's a lot more I would like to say and blog about, but finding the time is nearly impossible.  I'm exhausted, but happy.

Nine Months!?

Allie is now nine months old!

All the sudden my little baby is seeming more and more like a little girl every day.  This month I feel like she exploded with progress, especially on the motor skills and physical front.

Even though at the beginning of the month she was already pulling to standing, there is such a difference now.

She can easily pull to standing and also can get down from standing into a sitting position.  She also likes to stand between two things and do a 360, completely turning around, by holding each thing (like ottomans or laundry baskets).  She can climb ramps or small stairs (yikes), and crawls fast now.

We also got her a walker and she's mastered walking all over the kitchen in her walker, which is pretty hilarious to watch.  She is extremely active.

Allie is definitely showing us that she knows what we are saying a lot now.  If you ask her to hand you something, she will and likes the game of passing it back and forth.  She loves picaboo (has for a long time), loves watching me dance and sing to her, loves being bounced up and down, loves getting raspberries on her cheeks and belly.  It's so so cute to watch her laugh at things.

Allie really had fun doing a lot of fall activities this month.  She went to a pumpkin patch for the first time!

She also had her first Halloween in which she dressed up as a lady bug at both our neighborhood parade and a Halloween party with friends and other babies.

Allie is still exploring food.  We introduced her to several meats this month.  Her favorite is chicken, by a landslide, but she's also tried fish, turkey, and pot roast.  She's tried new stuff like spaghetti with sauce, hummus, kiwi, graham crackers, muffins, and raspberries.  Food is kind of hit or miss for her.  Her favorite foods are butternut squash, puffs, pears, and yogurt (coconut milk yogurt).  Allie is getting more interested in feeding herself, and with that I'm finding it harder to spoon feed her things she used to like, so that can be frustrating.  She's most successful feeding herself butternut squash (cooked, soft chunks), puffs, and Cheerios, but we're trying new things all the time.  We still do purees (I still make a lot) too, and sometimes they go over well, sometimes not.  It just depends on Allie's mood.

I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but we found out Allie has a mild milk allergy.  We had given her small amounts of yogurt and ice cream and noticed a rash around her mouth, so we took her to the doctor and she recommended Allie have a blood draw to be tested for the milk allergy.  This is bad news to me since I LOVE ice cream.  We are getting referred to an allergist to further explore this, but for now milk products are out.  The good news is we've successfully given Allie coconut and soy yogurt and ice cream.  We are really hoping she grows out of this and can have milk and milk products in the future though.  I guess we'll know more about what to expect once we see the allergist.

Allie is super interactive now.  She shrieks with delight if you call to her and smile from across the room. Every time I pick her up at daycare she loses her mind with delight, but will completely melt down in the two seconds it takes me to collect her things once she sees me from inside the play area.  She laughs and smiles and everyone says she smiles with her eyes.  She is a true joy and watching her get excited, smile, and laugh is the best thing ever.

Sleep is going pretty good.  We had a fairly rough daylight savings week, with a couple wake-ups before 5am, but she usually sleeps through the night and is just up really early most mornings.  I feel like she's still pretty unpredictable.  Some nights she'll sleep all night, sometimes up once a night for a feeding, some nights (like last night), she's up more than once a night if she's really thrown off.  Last night I gave up trying to get her back to sleep in the crib (she'd cry as soon as I put her down) at 4am and let her sleep with me.  It's rare that happens though.

Allie got in visits with both sets of grandparents this month.  Greg's parents were here at the beginning of October for a long weekend, and Allie went to see my parents at the beginning of November.

As for her stats, she is in size three diapers, and wearing 6M, 6-9, and 9M clothes.
At her 9 month check up:
Weight: 15.6 lbs  (5-10th percentile)  TINY!
Length: 27 inches (25-50th percentile)
Head: 44.5 cm (50-75th percentile)

I'll admit, her weight surprised me.  She's always been on the smaller side for weight, but less than 16 lbs at nine months seems so small!  I was guessing she was about 17 lbs now based on her eating solids and breast milk.  I think maybe because she is so mobile now she is burning a lot of calories.  Anyway, her pediatrician is not worried about it at all and showed us that she is totally in the normal range for her growth and for an exclusively breast fed baby.  I'm trying not to worry about it.  It's not like she looks skinny or anything, she looks like she has a normal amount of baby fat.

The only other concern we have at all with Allie is that she's not using consonant sounds much like "ma ma, da da, or ba ba".  We actually think we're partly to blame because we have let her have the pacifier so much, so the pediatrician said to try not letting her use it as much and try repeating those sounds in front of her a lot and hopefully within the next month she will pick them up.  She makes lots of "Eeeeeeee!" and "Arrrhhhhh" noises, but just not a lot of consonant sounds.  I am also hoping it's partially that she's so focused on moving with all the crawling and standing she's doing that she doesn't work on talking as much.

I am feeling good lately.  Still tired and never feeling caught up on things, but I feel good overall.  I feel like I'm getting the hang of work/life/baby/house/marriage more and more each day which makes me happy.   I've even been running some.  Usually only about two mile runs about twice a week (with or without the jogging stroller), but it's something. 

I can't believe we're in the home stretch to a year now.  Crazy...

Eight Months

Guess who's eight months old?!

Crazy huh?  When Allie was born, heck when she was conceived, I loved her from the first second, but honestly, my love for her grows bigger and is more overwhelming every day.  Look at that smile...  It just melts me every day.

As evidenced by the photo above, Allie is a pro at sitting now and rarely falls over.  She can also go from sitting to crawling easily.  She has moved from the army crawl to the regular crawl and has been doing this for a week or two now.

I haven't seen her pull to standing much (ok, now she is!), but she does crawl over to me and try to climb on me, which is sort of similar.  She'll stand with my assistance for long periods of time and seems to like it.  It'll be interesting to see when she does start standing more.

For the longest time I thought our jumperoo was a huge fail because Allie wouldn't tolerate being in it for long and wasn't jumping in it, but recently it clicked for her and now she's very into that and her doorway jumper.  She's pretty hilarious jumping in both.

Still, I feel like her attention span is pretty limited.  I have trouble getting anything done when I'm with her because she doesn't like to play alone and doesn't like being in the jumperoo, Pack N Play, her play yard, or any of her other baby holding things anymore unless you're interacting with her.  It's getting tough.

Feeding it going well.  Allie has cereal with fruit in the morning, a jar of baby food at daycare in the middle of the day, and more cereal and/or fruit or vegetable at dinner, so three meals a day most days.  She's an enthusiastic eater most of the time and loves being fed.  In general she's not eating much baby led style, but I try sometimes- with mushed black beans, cooked apple, etc...  She usually just kind of plays with the food on the tray but doesn't actually eat much.  We did try puffs recently though and she liked those and understands how to get them into her mouth, so we should probably try more.

In addition to solids, Allie usually has about five or six feedings of breast milk a day (including one during the night).  When she first started daycare, we were sending four 4oz bottles and she'd usually have three of the four.  A couple weeks ago I asked the teachers if they would prefer me sending three bigger bottles with 5-6oz of milk instead and they thought that would be fine.  I think when you breastfeed you always worry if the baby is getting enough or wonder how much they should have in a bottle when they're away from you.  She's doing well with the three bigger bottles so far.

As mentioned, Allie is still up once a night most nights.  I wondered if her increased food/milk intake would change that, but most nights she still seems hungry enough for a full feeding.  I know some babies take longer to consistently sleep through the night though, so I try not worry about it.  Once a night isn't a huge deal, and honestly I usually prefer that to waking up at 5am if that's the alternative.  I definitely over analyze Allie's sleep all the time though.  She's still going to bed between 7:30-8pm, and wakes up anywhere from 5:30-7:15am.  Occasionally I've actually had to wake her up to get her ready for daycare, but you know those 5:30am wake ups always happen on the weekends when we could sleep in ;)  Allie sometimes has nights where she fusses and cries a little a couple times during the night, but I try not to respond or not too quickly until I know she really needs me.  Often she'll settle herself back down without my help so that's good.  I also started putting a couple pacifiers in the crib (including a wubanub since those are easy to find with the stuffed animal attached) with her because a lot of the time the issue is finding a paci. 

Allie had her first trip to an apple orchard a couple weeks ago.  This is a big deal to me as a former New Englander.  This year we decided to go to Skytop Orchard, after hearing it's really family friendly.  I admittedly wanted cider donuts too, so we made a day trip out of it.  It was actually a pretty big fail.  The place was absolutely mobbed, with a line of cars waiting to even park when we got there.  The lines to pay for apples were insane and we didn't even get any donuts because the line for those was even longer.  Allie wasn't happy in the Ergo either, which was my plan for carting her through the orchard.  We snapped a bunch of cute pictures, picked our apples, and got out of there as soon as we could.

Allie also got to see her uncle Mark and my parents again this month when they came for a weekend visit.  He had fun making her laugh.

Allie moved to a new room at daycare and it's going well.  The babies are much more rambunctious and mobile in this room so I've already gotten two reports of her bumping her head :(.  Poor kiddo.  She also got her second cold, which she gave to Greg and I.  Not fun.  

I took her to the doctor the other day and we know that she's 16.1 lbs now.  Still on the smallish side.  She's in size three diapers all the time now and her clothing still varies anywhere from 3M to 6-9 month stuff, so all over the place.  I should have more stats next month when she goes for her nine month well visit.

That about sums it up.  I really wish I could tell you that I'm going to be able to blog more, but honestly, it's not looking like I'm going to have more time to any time soon.  I already feel like I'm struggling (and failing) to keep up with so many things in life, and this is one hobby that's really taken a major back seat.  

Anyway, I love my girl, and spending as much time with her as I can is my first priority!  I promise to try and sneak on here whenever I get the chance though, and I do enjoy the monthly updates to keep track of it all!

Seven Months

Hey there!  Well, we have reached seven months of Allie awesomeness.

Our kiddo is growing and changing every day.  I probably say this every month, but I'm really loving the age she is right now.  She's all full of smiles and laughter and it's getting easier to get her to do both.  She is also getting to a good place with tolerating being out, so we're starting to worry less about taking her shopping or out to eat, because she's usually pretty good about it as long as we don't leave her strapped in too long.  She's a lot of fun.

Allie has definitely mastered the army crawl now and can get around quite well this way, even though she's not doing a full on regular crawl.  She does get up on her hands and knees, but she doesn't usually get mobile that way, she's usually on her forearms when she crawls.  In any case, she's definitely moving a lot, so close supervision is key now.

Allie is also sitting very well now.  We still keep a close eye on her though because without warning she'll occasionally fall over, but usually she'll sit for a while without a problem, and she likes to go from sitting to army crawling if she sees something she's after.

Allie is eating about two "meals" a day now.  Daycare feeds her oatmeal cereal with water in the mornings on the days she is there, and then we do some kind of puree in the evening at dinner time.  I was open to the idea of Baby Led Weaning, but Allie didn't seem to get it at first.  Recently though, I did give her a spear of cucumber with the skin still on and she did pretty well gumming it and getting all but the skin ingested.  I think she likes the idea of it, but we also need to work on a food she likes the flavor of, because sometimes she seems turned off by cucumber.  We'll have to try some other things.  Allie really likes being fed with a spoon though, so in terms of actual food consumption, we've had pretty good success with spoon feeding and purees.  I've been making more things for her like butternut squash, yellow squash, peaches, etc...

Allie has had apples, peaches, pears, avocado, prunes, sweet potato, banana, acorn squash, butternut squash, peas, zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumber.  She has liked most things, some more than others.  Zucchini was the only big miss so far (she had a funny look on her face, like "WTF"), but I'll try it again.  One thing I'm noticing is that she's not too happy if other people eat in front of her and she's not getting fed, so usually we have to feed her something at a meal time if we're eating.  I think soon we can try some proteins with her, like beans, meat, cheese, and yogurt but I need to do more research on this.  For those of you with babies, when did you introduce those?

Breastfeeding is still going well.  I'm still pumping at work three or four times a day and feed Allie two or three times on weekdays (usually once or twice in the mornings depending on how early she gets up and once at bedtime) and all her milk meals on the weekends (about 6 times a day).  I definitely pay a ton of attention to my water intake and consumption of food to make sure I can produce enough milk for Allie, but overall it's going well.

As for water, Allie also love drinking out of a glass and reaches for mine whenever she sees me drinking.  It's funny.  She gets a lot of water on her shirt in the process, but loves trying.  We've tried some sippy cups and she's got a ways to go with those too.  She does best with one that she has that has a spout in the middle and is most like a bottle.

Sleep.  Well, right at about six months we decided it was time to get Allie out of the sleep suit.  It actually seemed like her sleep was kind of getting worse because of her being restricted in it, and also she was close to being able to roll over in it, which is one reason you basically HAVE to get them out of it.  So finally one night I bit the bullet and put her to sleep in a onesie, sleeper, and a Halo sleep sack, which is the method the sleep suit people suggest you use to transition a baby out of the suit, since they still feel the buffer of the layers of clothing.  We only did the onesie layer for about a week and from then on have just put her in a sleeper and the sleep sack, which we're still doing.  Overall, the transition went well, probably better than I expected.  She immediately was up less than she had been in the suit for the first couple nights.  She even started sleeping close to the whole night consistently.  The only thing was that for a lot of this month she did this thing where'd she would sleep from about 8pm til about 4-5am, and wake up and I usually had to feed her and then SHE would go back to sleep, but it was too close to my wake time (6am) on week days for me to go back to sleep.  This week she had several nights where she made it the whole night through, but she is still kind of hit or miss on wake up time, anywhere from 5am to like 7am, so it's pretty hard to predict.  One note- we did have to go up to size 3 diapers at night because she's going so long without waking up and getting changed and leaked through some size 2 nighttime ones a bunch of times.  The 3s are working well so far.

Allie and I went to Hilton Head for labor day weekend, and she did great in the pool and beach again.

When at the beach we saw tons of little kids that are about a year older than Allie and it made me wonder how she's going to be next summer when we are there.  Mind boggling...

Allie also tried out the swings for the first time recently.  SO CUTE!

Allie has become super interested in Clyde in the past couple weeks.  When she sees him she smiles at him and if you play fetch with Clyde in front of her, she laughs hysterically.  It's hilarious.

Stats:
I think Allie is close to 16 lbs according to my scale, but she could be a little less since it's hard to figure out ounces.  I feel like she's probably going to chunk up a little more now that she's eating solids more.
She's kind of in between size 2 and 3 diapers.  She's still wearing 2s during the day, but 3s at night and I think we're on our last box of 2s because I think we can pretty much put her in 3s all the time now.
Clothes are kind of all over the place.  She can be anywhere from a 3M to a 6-9 month depending on the brand.  She pretty much fits into anything 6M well though.

I am doing pretty good.  Being a working mom is tough, and I struggle with the same stuff I'm sure all working moms struggle with. There are not enough hours in the day and many week days I feel like I do not have nearly enough time to get everything done.  It's hard, but I still think it's the right thing for us.

Allie is doing great at daycare and moves to the next room/age group this week.  I admit, I am a little teary to see her leave her first daycare room.  I really felt comfortable with the teachers in there and never worried about her.  I'm sure the new room will be great too.  It's crazy to see her moving up and growing up so quick.

I'm going to try to do a day in the life of a working mom post soon, and also should do a 7 month favorite things post since it's been a while since I've done one, and we have a lot of favorite baby things to update you guys on.  Both of these have been on my mind for a while, but finding the time to blog about them is... difficult!

I love this kid more than I can put into words...  I'm so lucky to be her mom :)

Six Months!

Life has been very busy around here lately, and I'm almost a week late on my six month update on Allie!  I can't believe it's been half a year since she was born.  Wow.

Allie has become quite the fun baby.  She's really in a phase where you can tell she just wants to learn and explore everything and be stimulated constantly.  She seems to catch on to things more easily now and I'm amazed at the things we're able to show and teach her.  She has learned things like opening her mouth to be fed, using a sippy cup, sitting, pulling on a toy to make it play music...  all kinds of things!

Allie had her six month well visit and we got her new stats:

14 lbs 3 oz
25 inches long
43 inches head

She's still in size 2 diapers, and her clothing is anywhere from 3M to 3-6 to 6M, it just kind of depends on the brand.

She's right on track for her stats curve, even though I hear about other babies that are easily five pounds heavier at her age all the time.  She looks perfect to me :)

Lots of new developments for Allie this month.  At six months here are some things Allie can do:

She can kind of sit, it's getting better every day, even though she's prone to falling over after a while, so you still need to watch her carefully.

She can scoot around on her belly, not exactly crawling, but close.  She can definitely move forward, and even moves in circles.  She'll do it if she sees something she wants- like a toy on the other side of her play mat.

She also likes practicing her standing!  

Allie had some really good times in the pool a couple weeks ago in Hilton Head.  I couldn't believe how much she seemed to like it.  Water baby!

She also looks good in her cover up!

Allie is also into grabbing her feet now, which cracks me up.  I've yet to see her do "happy baby" holding both feet at the same time, but often catch her holding one.

Allie starting taking more of an interest in Clyde recently, and now reaches for him and watches him when he's around, which is funny.  I caught her pulling his ear one day, but he didn't seem to mind at all.  Good dog :).

We've also started putting her in her strollers without the car seat finally.  We were kind of waiting til she was good enough at sitting to not be slumped over, and she's finally there now.  We still haven't done shopping cart seats yet, but probably should be able to in the next few weeks.

The biggest new development is probably starting solids this month.  We got the go ahead to start baby oatmeal cereal and first foods, so we've been doing that.  She's had avocado, prunes, pears, banana, applesauce, and peas so far.  She is totally her mama's baby and LOVES to eat.  I actually notice that she gets kind of mad/fussy if you are eating in front of her and not feeding her something now, so I have to make sure I have her stuff ready to go.

Feeding solids has been interesting.  I have always intended, and still intend, to make Allie a lot of her baby food.  The first night though, we went shopping for the oatmeal, and ended up picking up a couple jars of organic baby food, because my husband was excited about them (Mr. Convenience).  So jarred pears ended up being one of the first things we fed her, even though I thought it was kind of stupid because it's something I could easily make her, but we were raring to go and it was convenient.  I did "make" her pureed peas, but so far, that's the only thing I've actually cooked and fed her, which wasn't what I'd planned, but things have been so busy, it's been hard to make much.  I also am interested in doing some of the baby led weaning, but so far the only thing I've tried with is avocado and banana, and she didn't really seem to get it.  She's much more into opening her mouth wide and having me feed her with a spoon at this point, so I'm just kind of rolling with it.  All of us are having fun with it.

Right at the six month mark, Allie got her first cold.  It actually wasn't too terrible.  She had a slight fever and some congestion, but it could have been worse.  Timing wise, it worked out ok because my mom was visiting, and was able to watch her when I had to work, and then Greg came home from a trip and took over, so we could keep her out of daycare.  Of course, Greg made fun of my incessant calling to check on Allie and sent me this picture one day to show me how things were going...  Very funny.

It's an interesting time right now, because Allie is still very much a baby, but she's also exploding with progress so it suddenly feels very different.  She still has baby meltdowns once in a while though.

And she still sleeps on me like she did when she was hours old...

I love this girl to the moon and back, she is my world.  Happy six months baby!  Can't wait to see how the next six go!