Seven Months Old

Charlie has made it to the 7 month mark. It seems like after seven months it goes by even faster. I know people that have seven month old babies and before you know it they are a year old. I know it is going to go by so fast... I have even started planning her first birthday party. It's going to be a pool party!

She does something new almost every day. Right now she is showing signs of crawling. She hasn't quite figured it out, but I know she will get there soon enough. I am actually watching her try to do it now. She starts out in a sitting position, puts her hands on the floor, twists a little and ends up on her belly... which she hates. She then cries a little and I put her back in the sitting position. I know it be long before she is crawling all over the house and making messes. I am excited and worried about when this day comes.

She is a good sleeper at this point. She goes between taking three short naps and two longer naps during the day. Either way she gets a good amount of sleep during the day and sleeps great at night. We rarely have to get up with her at night. Every once in a while she will wake up in the middle of the night. Sometimes she quickly gets herself back to sleep and sometimes we have to go in her room to comfort her. She normally doesn't cry when she wakes up. She just babbles in her crib until we come get her. She is still going to bed around 7:00pm and waking up around 6:30 or 7:00am. It's not too bad... especially since I get up fairly early anyway.

She eats great! I read all this stuff about how they won't really get all that much food in their mouth and that it was just practice. We never really had that... She has always been able to eat from a spoon quite well. She eats a new vegetable every week (I think we are running out of vegetables now). She eats the vegetable around lunch time and eats cereal in the evening, as well as bottles throughout the day. I can't for the day to come where she just eats regular food.

She tries to repeat things like "mama" "baba" and "dada" but she normally just gets "baba" out clearly. However, when we are not trying to get her to repeat us she says them all. I know she is not calling me "mama" but it makes me feel pretty special. When I leave the room she normally says "mama" over and over... I like to think she is calling for me.

She is a very curious baby. She watches everything and when she gets a hold of some she examines it thoroughly. I know when she starts crawling will have our hands full. She will be into everything. I probably should start baby proofing a little more.

This is her pre-crawling maneuver. She eventually just ends up on her belly and mad.

I Love This Kid!

I just feel like posting some cute stuff...

This is Charlie's newest hat. We are starting to get quite the collection. Maybe that will be her thing... Hats. Tallon has a lot of hats too. They are going to be so much a like.

These are our new Tickle Monster gloves that came in our Tickle Monster kit. She laughs so hard when we tickle her. I love it. I am pretty sure she is not phased by the gloves, but we like them.

This is what our TV room looks like now. It has been taken over by baby things. She seems to like it though. She likes being able sit up and play. Also, I think she likes watching TV with us.

I just really like this picture of her fat belly showing.

There are so many things that Charlie does that I don't want to forget. I keep a baby book with all the milestones and firsts, but I don't write down the really important things. Like the way she snuggles into me when I am feeding her last bottle before she falls asleep. (All the other bottles throughout the day she holds on her own). Also, while I am feeding her that bottle she always rubs her foot on the something... it's so cute to see that tiny foot twirl around until it finds something to touch. Lately she has been moving around a lot more in her crib. The last few nights when I put her in her crib she props her foot up on the side of the crib. It is so funny to see her chubby little leg up in the air and the pajama covered toes poking out of the side of the crib.

I know there are a lot more things to write, but these all happened tonight and are fresh on my mind. She changes so much every day. I feel like it is all going so fast, but I also can't wait to see what she is going to do next.

Half A Year!

Charlie is now 6 months old!

I seriously can't believe it. There are times when I think the day feels like it couldn't get any slower, but then I think about Charlie and how fast she has grown... I don't want to speed things up at all. She has been growing and changing so much over the past 6 months. Everything is so different from that first day we brought her home. When she first arrived home she didn't do much... she was calm, quiet, sleepy and not very heavy. Now she is loud, curious, happy, hungry and huge!

We have re-introduced some solid foods. We started with rice cereal. She ate that one time a day for a week. Then we gave her some sweet potatoes for a week. At about this time she started waking up around 10:00 or 11:00. We would have to give her half of a bottle to get her back to sleep. Two days in to the sweet potato week we started giving her cereal in the evening before her bedtime bottle. That seemed to do the trick. This week we have started giving her squash. She is sleeping great and does not seem to be having any tummy problems. This weekend I am going to give her pears.

Over the past few months Charlie has had some good and bad sleep habits. It seems to be an off and on thing. Some weeks she sleeps great and others not so much. Last weekend she started getting very fussy and she just seemed uncomfortable. We think she is probably teething. She had started some pretty bad sleeping habits during this time. Tallon finally decided that she was fine and we needed to make sure she was sleeping in her crib every night. This is all stuff I totally agree with... he just didn't feel this way until last weekend. Ever since he decided that she couldn't sleep in her swing or in our room she has been sleeping great. Maybe she just needed to know that now mom and dad both are the same page when it comes to her sleeping habits.

Charlie started sitting up on her own about week after her 5 month birthday. I was so excited when she started doing this. It was just in time for Christmas! She has gotten so good at sitting up that we have decided to transition her to the big bath tub. She has done great! The very first time we sat her in there she looked at me with a scared sad face, but she got over it quickly. She started splashing and playing with her rubber ducky. It is a little slippery, but I think it will all go well.

She really getting to be so much to play with. She smiles so much and laughs at just about everything we do. She is really an amazing baby and we love her so much.

Charlie's First Christmas

We celebrated Christmas four times this last weekend. Charlie really was a lot of fun. She really liked banging her hands on the presents and trying to eat the paper. She also has enjoyed all of her new toys.

On Christmas Eve we went over to my mom's to celebrate with her. We got there early to open presents and then we had a great meal.

We had Christmas morning all to ourselves. We woke up slightly early (when Charlie woke up) to eat breakfast and open gifts. This is the first year that we didn't have to go some where on Christmas morning. I am pretty sure this is how we will continue to do it from now on. I want to start our own family traditions.

That afternoon we went to see Tallon's family at his brother's house. We have two nieces and 3 nephews on his side of the family. So there was a lot going on and lots of gifts to open. We had a great time watching all the kids and Charlie open their presents.

The day after Christ we went over to my dad's to celebrate with him. My dad is one to go all out for Christmas (or really any holiday). He makes it last all day... and I love that. We take turns opening gifts and wraps up every little thing so there are more things to open. We arrived around 10:00am and didn't leave until almost three. The whole time we were either eating a delicious meal or opening gifts.


Charlie received SO much stuff this year. She got a ridiculous amount of new toys. She also got a ton of new clothes. I didn't realize how much clothing she got until I was putting it all away. Her closet is now full. We had to buy a new book shelf and toy box to put in her room for all of her new stuff. Her room went from looking like a little baby's room to a kids room.

Sitting Up and Smiling!

Charlie decided yesterday that she was going to sit independently. She seems pretty happy about it too. It is amazing how babies just decide to start doing things. One day they can't sit up and the next they can.

She is able to keep herself up pretty well. Also, when she starts to fall back she is able to stop herself and get back to sitting.

Some other cute things she has started doing include:

• Making the raspberries sound "phphphph." It is quiet and slobbery, but it is coming along.
• She has started making a "ba...ba...ba..." sound. She sticks out her lip to do it and it looks like she is about to cry.
• When I pick her up from daycare and recognizes me when I enter the room. She watches me as I collect all of her things and smiles really big when I walk towards her.
• She has started to reach out a little when someone else has her and she wants me to hold her. (this might be something that is not really happening, but that's what it looks like.

There are a lot of other things, but these seem to be favorite right now.

Now I will leave you with some more pictures....

Sitting up in the bath tub with dad

Attempting the raspberries sound


"phphphphph"


"ba... ba... ba..."

Foods = No Sleep

Okay... maybe not no sleep... but we have had less sleep over the past month.

Charlie took to eating foods quite well, but her tummy did not. Over the past month her sleeping patterns have changed. I thought it was growth spurt or possibly teething. As we increased the solid foods the night wakings increased. Last weekend we a few bad nights. Saturday she stayed at my mom's and around 6:00pm she started screaming. Charlie rarely cries... so when I called my mom and heard Charlie in the background I got very concerned. We rushed over there, but by that time she had calmed down enough to go to sleep. It was obvious her stomach was hurting.

On Sunday Tallon and I decided not give her any solid foods for the day... mostly to give her tiny tummy a break. That night she slept so much better. I think she only woke up once... I gave her the pacifier and rolled over and went right back to sleep for the rest of the night.

We have not given her solid foods all week... in result we have had no night wakings. She is sleeping from 7:00pm until 6:30am without even a peep. It's amazing. However, I do feel really bad for feeding her so much. She seemed to really like to eat... so I kept feeding her. I feel like I have been torturing her tummy for over a month. We decided to keep her off solid foods for a week or two and then we will start back at the beginning. I will start again with cereal. I will give her smaller portions and fewer servings. Hopefully by 6 months I will get this figured out. I want her to eat solid foods, but I really don't want her stomach to hurt - and the sleeping is good too.

5 Months Old!

It seems that Charlie is another month older again. It is all going by SO fast.

Over the past month we have started giving Charlie some solid foods. We started with rice cereal. She didn't seem to like it all that much. I even tried mashing up bananas with it, but that still didn't help. I am reading a book called Super Baby Foods and it said to try sweet potatoes. Well, she LOVED sweet potatoes. So far we have tried cereal, bananas, apples, sweet potatoes, avocados and peaches. She likes bananas, but them to upset her stomach. Apples also seem to give her a tummy ache. She shook with disgust when she tried avocados. The daycare lady said she loved peaches, but she kept her mouth clinched shut when I tried feeding them to her. So, we are sticking with sweet potatoes for a little while until we can start some other veggies. Maybe she just doesn't like fruit all that much.

Besides starting foods Charlie has started to roll over more and more. She is starting to sit up a little... very little. She talks a lot and smiles all of the time. It's really fun when she starts to laugh... she has kind of a deep voice (for a baby) so her laugh is kind of raspy. It's so cute. She has also started sucking her thumb a little more. I am actually pretty happy about that. She likes to have a pacifier while she sleeps, but when it falls out she can't always get it back in... I am hoping soon she will settle for her thumb.

She is a pretty good sleeper. Although, since Thanksgiving she hasn't been sleeping as well as I would like. She has been waking a few times a night. She is easily soothed back to sleep. She never needs a bottle in the middle of the night and if we put her in the swing she sleeps great. I am trying to avoid the swing for sleeping purposes, but when it is 4:00am and I can't get her back to sleep I put her in the swing. I am sure that will be a very hard habit to break, but some day she won't fit in the swing and we will both be forced to do other things.

Charlie is an incredibly good baby. Tallon and I love her so much! We have had so much fun over the past 5 months.