Emily at 9 months

Emily (aka: Little Tiny),

This month has been our favorite so far (minus the bottle strike), you are the happiest you have ever been and you are so curious and funny!  You are outgoing and brave when we are here at home and you are surrounded by people you know.  As soon as we go somewhere new you clam up and observe everything and everyone around you until you are 100% comfortable and then you are your normal (wild) self.

You are learning your sense of humor and this never gets old.  You'll hide in corners or behind walls and peek around to make us laugh.  You will do anything repeatedly if it gets a laugh from your dad and I.

You have given us quite the fight when it comes to eating.  You don't want your bottle and we have to distract you to get you to eat your big girl food.  You would rather be playing and chasing the cats and dog. Your favorite thing to eat are raspberries, you would have them for every meal if we let you.

You started to crawl this month and took off like a pro!! You are trying to pull up on everything but haven't quite mastered this skill yet- you've done it once and I know you're going to be doing it a lot more very soon. 

Our favorite things this this month are your cuddles and kisses.  You will give a kiss if we ask- always with an open mouth.  You love books, knocking down blocks, chasing the animals, and trying to find anything you aren't supposed to be getting into (cords, remotes, cell phones, and ripping up magazines).

Your least favorite things are getting your diaper changed and having anything taken away from you- this means serious tantrum time.

You have become a very good sleeper (hallelujah!!).  You take two naps a day and you are sleeping from 7-6:30 at night.  We are hoping this continues!

We love you so much sweet girl!!

Formula refusal

We are at a super fun chapter in E's little life....formula refusal.

Over the past few weeks Emily has been eating less and less formula (down from 26oz a day to maybe 20 on a good day) and getting her to take a bottle was taking some serious distracting.  But yesterday and today we have moved on to full out refusal to take her bottle.

I've tried putting it in a sippy cup, a regular cup, a different bottle, different nipple flow- no go.
I've tried adding juice to the bottle, feeding her in every imaginable position and every room in our house- no go.
I've tried letting her feed herself- nope, she throws the bottle across the room.
We even tried giving her some formula with a syringe this morning and she just spits it out.

A couple of people suggested getting her ears checked and that some babies don't want a bottle when teething because it hurts to suck.  This makes sense because she is starting to cut her top front teeth, but she is still taking her pacifier and sucking away.

When I called her pediatrician's office yesterday, they told me she should be getting 26-32 oz a day.  I told them I could only get her to drink 15.  They said to wait a couple of days and call back.

Yesterday she went 15.5 hours without a bottle and today it's been almost 7 hours since she had a bottle.  She is still eating her oatmeal, fruits and veggies at breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I even tried cutting back on her food yesterday to see if she would get hungry for a bottle, that didn't work either.

Has anyone else had this issue?  Does anyone have any other ideas?  Do I need to worry about her getting dehydrated or is she getting enough fluid at breakfast, lunch and dinner with her baby food?

What Emily is loving right now... 6-9 months

Emily is at an age now where she knows what she wants to play with and she goes right for it, throwing other toys out of the way.  Here are a few of her favorite things over the past three months.

Books-  My girl loves her books!  Especially the books that give her something to touch or have a good rhyme to them.  Her favorites right now are B is For Bear (she literally starts squealing as soon as she sees it), Tickle Tickle Peter, The Going to Bed Book, How Do I Love You, and Baby Einstein See and Spy Shapes.  We always have books out for her to look at and she loves them!  The books from the dollar bins at Tar.get have always been a big hit with her too.



Lady Lee & Drew Jones soft tie wood bead necklace-  You guys, this thing has been a life saver in so many situations.  Need to entertain the baby at the grocery store? Necklace. Need to keep baby happy at the Dr? Necklace. Emily loooooves it and it looks good with everything.  Here's a picture of mine, Emily and my niece were after it all day.

Baby pacifier + fashion accessory = aaaaamazing! I just ordered my second one and I want like every.single.one. Plus, Candis is so helpful and nice and she has worked with me twice to make a custom necklace (and she's an awesome blogger). Love her.

I want this.

Blocks-  Pretty much anything that we can stack and she can knock over.  This is her favorite thing to do.  We have the FP baby's first blocks and although she doesn't like to put them in the container right now, I'm sure she will eventually.  We also have Melissa and Doug Nesting Blocks and she loves knocking them down too.

Busy Poppin' Pals-  I make them pop up, she puts them back down.....now that's entertainment.

Anything that rattles-  She likes to shake things that make noise.  I've made my own rattle by just putting uncooked pasta in a small tupperware and she's happy as a clam.  We also have this rainmaker and we got this drum set that has all kinds of instruments inside.

Chasing things-  now that she can crawl she wants to chase anything that rolls.  We got her a mini playground ball and this little Giggable, that rolls away and makes laughing sounds, she gets a kick out of it.

What does your 6-9 month old love?


P.S. no one is paying me to say I like this stuff, I'm not cool enough for that.

dancing & crawling

We had a wonderful weekend full of dancing, crawling (yes, you read that right!) and some major baby proofing.

Here is Miss E dancing away (don't mind the slight shake of the camera from me laughing to myself)  How cute are those leg rolls??

And here is her first real attempt at crawling without our help!  She doesn't like to see her blocks stacked (she has to knock them down immediately) so we bribed her into crawling by building a tower just off the blanket.  This was taken on Saturday and since then she has gotten more coordinated, quicker and she can easily crawl across the room.  She is officially mobile!

You'll notice the entertainment center in the video- we have since baby proofed this area because all she wanted to do was beat on the glass and pull out the cable box and DVD player.  This is what it looks like now. We took off the entertainment center doors and put the electronics on top where she can't reach them. 

We also got rid of the tucker sling this weekend so she is no longer strapped into her crib.  There have been some funny incidents where she sits herself up and then can't figure out how to lay back down.  She doesn't make a peep, just sits quietly playing with her blankie with this look on her face like, "I'm getting away with something good here!". Little does she know, we are watching and having a good laugh.

TVT

Apparently I'm terrible at blogging in the summer....

- Poor Emily was sick for over two weeks with a cold that wouldn't quit.  Her nose was like a faucet.  I took her to the Dr. last Friday and he gave her antibiotics for a sinus infection and she is finally starting to feel better. 

- Her  sleep has gotten better in the past couple of days.  We have her crib mattress flat and she is out of her magic sleep suit but she still likes to be strapped in.  I've been strapping her looser and looser so that we can eventually be done with it.  She can turn herself to her side and she almost always ends up sideways in her crib.  She's also been doing really well with two naps a day.

-  Crawling and scooting are still a no go here.  All she wants to do is stand!

- I've been trying to get out of the house with Emily more during the day.  We started baby swim class this week and she loves it.  I'm not sure what she likes more, being in the water, or watching the other kids play. Tuesday while we were playing in the water she just stuck her whole face in on purpose, pulled her head back up and started laughing and grinning.  She is a little fish! Yesterday we went to a music class in a nearby town that she absolutely loved and today our PT had a group of SAHM's over to her house so I could meet some new people (she's the best).  We had such a good time and Emily loves being around other babies, it's encouraging her to attempt crawling!

I love the pool!

- Emily has three of her bottom teeth and one of her top teeth has started to poke through.  She hasn't been as fussy with these teeth and the hyland's teething tablets have helped her a lot at night. But now she grinds her teeth all day!

- She is thankfully coming out of one of the "wonder weeks" and I am so happy to have my cheerful baby back.  The past few weeks have been rough for her and us.  She was crying a lot, needing to be held almost all day long, and if I left the room she would scream until I came back. I got the wonder weeks app on my phone and it's crazy how accurate it is for her.

- We had her three month helmet scan appointment and her head is just about perfect!  They want us to keep her in the helmet for one more month because she isn't crawling yet.  We have been taking it off after her morning nap when she's playing and putting it back on when she sleeps.

getting my head scanned

-  Baby number 2 is growing away.  I'm 12 weeks 3 days today.  Still no symptoms but my belly is starting to poke out a bit.  I have an OB appt next week and I'm excited to hear that little heart beat again.  My doppler is still packed away and I'm trying to resist the urge to get it out.

sleep crutches

Emily is a sleep disaster puzzle. 

Let me break it down for you.... I'll underline all of the sleep crutches we need to break. 

Since forever, she has been sleeping in her crib with the mattress propped up and in a tucker sling (so she doesn't slide to the bottom of the crib) because she has reflux.  One day her naps started sucking majorly (20 minutes long) and I heard about Merlin's Magic Sleep Suit- it was a lifesaver. Her naps got better but then her night time sleep got worse (waking up 4-5 times per night).  So I've been transitioning to two naps instead of three.  Now her night time sleep is good and her naps are so-so, I'll take it.

The issue is, we need to start breaking all of these sleep crutches.  I can't really have a one year old strapped into her crib and smashed into a sleep suit that doesn't fit her, right? So, I started lowering the mattress a little bit at a time and she was doing fine, reflux wise.  Today I got crazy and decided to lower the mattress all the way, take out the sling and put her in a sleep sack instead of the magic suit.....all hell broke loose and I am not over exaggerating.  She screamed like someone was torturing her for 10 minutes, got herself stuck in a corner, and started kicking off the side of the crib hitting her head on the other side of the crib.  Steve and I went in to rescue her and she wouldn't stop crying until we took her out of the room.  I broke down and put the sling back in but left the mattress flat.  10 minutes later we put her down again, in her magic suit, strapped in her tucker sling.  She cried for 5 minutes and then fell asleep.

Why does my child like to be strapped into her crib?? And how the hell do I do I break these last two sleep crutches??

Baby #2 will be an awesome sleeper, right???