Happy 7 Months!

Here's what's happening with Emily at 7 months:

 - She wears mainly 6-12 month clothes, but can still fit into several of her 3-6 month outfits.

 - She's eating solid foods (about a 1/2 jar of the stage 2 foods and cereal) (Wahoo!)  3 times a day and having 6 oz. of formula every 3-4 hours.  I almost think she likes veggies better than fruit (is this my daughter?).

 - She reaches out to us anytime she wants us to pick her up. I love this!

 - She repeats "la, la" over and over.  We're still waiting for "mama and dada."

 - She's doing so well at sitting up.  She's completely stable now.

 - She rolls all over the place.  That's her means of mobility.  If she wants something across the room, she just rolls to it.

 - She makes this loud squeal noise when she's excited.  It reminds me of what a baby dinosaur would sound like (not that I've ever heard a baby dinosaur, but kind of what one sounds like on Jurassic Park).

 - Her personality is totally coming out.  She loves to laugh. . .all the time.  She cracks herself up.  She will literally just be sitting still and all of a sudden just starts laughing out loud.  It's the cutest sound ever and it melts my heart!

 - Still no teeth!  I can't believe it's taking so long!  I feel like she's been teething for months!  Everything and anything goes straight to her mouth.  I'm hoping soon that a couple of teeth will break through.  Her poor little cheeks are constantly red from all the drool that are on them.

 - She's still on the acid reflux medicine.  We tried to take her off of it for a week after her 6 month checkup, well after 4 days. . .she was back on. 

- Naptime is still pretty much non-existent. Literally, she only sleeps in 20-30 min. increments on the weekends. She is so afraid she's going to miss something that no matter how tired she is. . .she will fight it. This can lead to one very cranky baby.

 - She really is overall an extremely happy baby!  What a difference acid reflux medicine and some gentle formula can make.

Family Fun Day

After a pretty boring morning, Shawn declared this afternoon that we were going to have a Baxter Family Fun Day.  :)  I know you are all asking yourselves what does one do on Baxter Family Fun Day.  Well, let me tell you.  We headed over to a new outdoor shopping center by our house to check out some of the new stores and then after a quick 20 minute power nap for Emily (she only sleeps in 20-30 min. increments on the weekends) we headed out to take a walk and stopped by one of the playgrounds in our neighborhood.  They had a couple of the baby swings, so we thought we would try it out.  She had only been in a swing once at Easter and was pretty sleepy at the time, so we were curious how she would react.  She LOVED it!!  She would not stop giggling.  She looked so little in the swing, but she had such a huge smile on her face.  We also took her down the slides a few times.  She liked that, but definitely preferred the swings.  Now that we know how much she loved it, we are planning on making several more trips back this summer.

Just playing around the house this morning

Love those baby blues

Going for a walk

Loving the swings

She had this huge smile on her face the whole time

She looks so tiny in the swing

Daddy tried out the swings too.  We forgot how fun it is to swing.  :)

Time to try out the slides

They had lots of slides.  They were pretty steep too.  I took Emily down one and was surprised at how fast they were.  I think it scared me though more than Emily.

Trying out the climbing wall

I think it turned out to be a pretty fun Baxter Family Fun Day.  It was nice getting out of the house and doing something different.  And I think it definitely wore Emily out. 

Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Room. .

Emily got a new toy for Easter that I thought we would try out tonight.  She has a sound machine in her room that we always turn on, but I thought she might like to have her new toy instead to cuddle with.  It lights up and plays 4 or 5 songs before turning off.  She loved it!  She always scratches her head as she is falling asleep (this came about from her ezcema itching her, now I think it's just a habit), so now she has something else to distract her.  She can keep her hands on her toy instead of scratching her head.

Sippy Cup

When we went to Emily's 6 month checkup, Dr. G gave us a handout telling us all about solid foods.  The handout also told us we could start introducing Emily to a sippy cup.  I thought this weekend was a good time to try.  Well, we are still learning.  She knew she needed to hold the handles, but unfortunately she was much more interested in chewing on the cup then actually trying to get formula out of it.

 

Miss You Daddy

Since Shawn has been gone this week, I have obviously had to take over his Daddy duties.  One of his jobs each night is to give Emily a bath.  He loves giving her a bath as Emily is always happy during "tubby time".  Well, Shawn has taught Emily how to splash in the tub and at the end of each bath I have given her this week. . . I am soaked!  And I'm not exaggerating  She gets water everywhere!  It's fun watching her splash away, but I have to say I am eagerly awaiting Shawn to come back so he can take over the bath time duties.

Waiting patiently for me to turn on the water. . .

It's hard to catch her kicking. . .but do you see the waves in the tub. . .

A few side notes. . in the last week or so, Emily has started making this really high pitch squeal noise whenever she gets excited, which is quite often.  It cracks me up.   We've got it on video. . .but I have yet to learn how to post a video.

Also. . .over the last couple of weeks. . .Emily's eating more and more solid foods. I sent food to daycare and they now feed her breakfast and lunch. She's doing so well. She still doesn't eat a lot (1/2 jar of the stage 1 foods), but we are getting there. So far we've tried bananas, apples, pears, carrots, sweet potatoes, and squash. After trying them all a few times. . .she's come to like them all! Yay! I guess she has more of a "mature" palate then we thought. So far, it seems like she's much less picky of an eater than me. Of course, I have only bought her foods that I like, so that might not be saying much. :) But for now. . .she gets some oatmeal and 1/2 jar of fruit for breakfast and lunch and rice cereal and 1/2 jar of veggies for dinner. We'll probably start moving on to the stage 2 foods soon. It's such a relief that she's starting to eat more solid foods!

Just the Girls

Shawn is out of town this week, so it's just me and Emily at home this week.  We're enjoying our girl time.  :) 

My First Mother's Day

Today I got to celebrate my first Mother's Day with Emily.  Of course I celebrated last year when I was pregnant, but this year had a whole new meaning now that Emily is here.  It's been a great Mother's Day.  Emily (with a little help and money from Daddy) started off by sending me flowers to work on Thursday (FTD got the delivery date wrong. . .I wasn't supposed to get them until Friday), but either way, I loved them.  At daycare on Friday, they had muffins for moms during the morning drop off.  And then this morning, Daddy made breakfast and took care of Emily, so I could have the morning off, and Emily gave me the beautiful picture frame that she made at school. 

This is the reason why I feed Emily and not Daddy. . . He let her eat straight out of the bowl.

Here's the beautiful frame Emily made me at school for Mother's Day.

Finally, some sad events this week made me realize just how lucky I am to be a mom.  Emily has changed my life in ways I could never have imagined.  I love her so much and am so appreciative of every day I get to spend with her.  I feel selfish for the times I've complained about her fussiness because in the end all the fussiness and sleepless nights are all so little in the big picture.  I was blessed with a healthy, happy, beautiful baby and I am so thankful everyday that I get to be her mom.  I love you miss Emily!

Birthday/Mother's Day Dinner

Tonight we had my parents and brother's family over for dinner to celebrate my Mom's birthday as well as Mother's Day.  My 2 nieces (Lauren and Natalie) loved playing with Emily and it was nice to have them around to help entertain her as Shawn and I got dinner ready.  All the girls are 2 years apart, so I think it will be so nice for Emily to have cousins so close in age, that literally live around the corner from us.  I snapped a few pictures of the girls having a tea party.  :)

Emily was little upset at this point of the tea party.  It was so cute because Nattie kept patting Emily saying it's okay baby.  :)

Lauren and Natalie entertaining Emily.

Happy Birthday Mimi

Happy Birthday Mimi!

Love, Emily

Sitting Up

Just over the last week or so, Emily has done so well at sitting up.  She can now sit up by herself for about 15 minutes at a time. 

Please ignore the rash around her mouth in all of these pictures.  She's been coming home from school this week with a rash and I have no idea what it's from.  Oh and her crazy hair. . .it's longer on one side of her head.  We need some baby gel.  :)

Thanks Mimi for my cute outfit!

On another note, Emily's not crawling yet, but she is finding other ways to become mobile.  She will now roll herself from one side of a room to the other.  I have a feeling our days of her sitting still are gone.