Seven Months!

 My sweet baby girl turned seven months old a couple of weeks ago! It’s hard for my brain to comprehend just how close we are to that ONE YEAR mark. When I’m on Pinterest, I see the inspiration boards of friends who have kiddos a bit younger than me, and they’re pinning ideas for first year birthday parties. I think I have been in denial about the fact that my baby is growing up! But it’s happening whether I want it to or not…so I just need to embrace it, I suppose. Seven months is a good age…she is so.much.fun. Her little personality comes out more and more every day! Can’t you tell?

A lot has happened (developmentally) over the last two weeks, so I’m going to try very hard to remember to only include in this post the things that Campbell was doing between 6 and 7 months. But the 7 to 8 month post is going to be exciting!

Sleeping Patterns: Campbell’s sleeping patterns are definitely changing. Christmas must have really messed with her, because she’s not the sleeper that she used to be. We’ve had a LOOOOONG string of nights without any waking, but that’s not happening so much any more. I think she’s working on getting teeth, and that’s got to be uncomfortable for her. We usually start the bedtime routine at around 7 or 7:30, depending on whether or not she’s getting a bath. If she’s not getting a bath, we put on her “sleepy lotion”, change into pj’s, read a story, nurse, and then I put her in her crib. She almost always nurses to sleep, and the transfer from my arms to the crib is pretty seamless. It’s the rare occasion that she wakes up during that transfer, but when it happens, it usually doesn’t take her long to drift back off to sleep. She still seems to be taking good naps at Ms. Gayle’s house, but not so much at home. I’m not sure what that’s about, but she’ll really only stay asleep if someone is holding her for a nap. I can’t understand it, because that’s not how she sleeps at the sitters, and we have ZERO trouble putting her to bed in her crib at night. For naps at home during the day, I follow the same routine (minus bath, sleepy lotion, and story), but as soon as she touches the mattress, her eyes fly open and she’s ready to play. Oh well…we’re working on it.

Eating Habits: Campbell LOVES to eat. We’re doing our best to include her in mealtimes with us, and I think she thoroughly enjoys it. We’re still working toward the baby-led weaning (BLW) concept, and it’s going okay. It works great at home, but not so much with the sitter. Ms. Gayle doesn’t like it, and unfortunately, she doesn’t follow it, even though I’ve asked her to on many occasions. It’s incredibly frustrating to know that my sitter isn’t following through on what I ask her to do (and I don’t think that anything we ask of her is any big deal), but I guess I’m beginning to just expect it. We just try to do BLW at home and hope that it’s enough to encourage her to eat and explore on her own. So far it seems to be going okay…I would just like to have consistency throughout her day.

Campbell is still nursing well. She averages somewhere between 5 and 6 nursings (including bottles at the sitters) per day. The addition to solids has been a little bit difficult for me, because I want to be certain that the majority of her calories/nutrition comes from breastmilk, and I’m not sure how to be sure that’s happening. I’ve got no less than 5 breastfeeding books, and I’ve read them all. They all do a fantastic job of addressing the establishment of a robust milk supply in those first few days/weeks/months, but I think they all do a poor job of working through the introduction of solids while continuing to nurse. It seems like they all pretty much say, “Well, you’ve made it this far with breastfeeding your baby, so you’ll figure this one out. Good luck!” Not good enough for me. So…I’m on a quest to get more info on nursing and solids. Any advice you can give is appreciated!

New Foods: It’s horrible, but I can’t really keep up with the new foods that Campbell has had. I know lots of the literature says that a new food should only be introduced once every 3 -5 days to rule out allergies, but we (I) don’t really follow that. Food allergies don’t run in either side of our family, so I figure we’re in pretty good shape, and so far, so good. I do know that she’s had apples, pears, bananas, sweet potatoes, cucumber, and carrots. She also had some pasta (both plain and with marinara sauce) and a meatball. I’m sure we’ve introduced other foods, but I can’t remember them! For the most part, we give her a bit of whatever we’re having, and she loves to dig in! We put small amounts of a few foods on her tray, and let her choose what and how much to eat. I’ve really started to notice that she’s picking certain foods, instead of just grabbing whatever is closest. It’s so much fun to watch her figure out the whole “eating” thing!

New Discoveries: The first thing that comes to mind is that she’s now really seeming to enjoy her baths. For the longest time, it seemed like she just tolerated her baths in the baby tub. Then, it started to become really obvious that she was outgrowing it, and finally she started sitting up when the baby tub got tight. Now that she’s in the big tub (with toys!), she’s having so much fun. She loves to chase her rings and other tub toys around, and she’s learning to splash. David usually gives her a bath (because really, I don’t like doing bath time…it stresses me out), and I love hearing them play together. David usually takes his phone in and they listen to something on Pandora…it’s generally either the Kentucky Sports Radio show or some bluegrass station. They play and splash and laugh, and I love it. I know Campbell enjoys that time with her Daddy, and I think it might have something to do with the fact that he lets her have more water in the tub than I do. J

Her Accomplishments: Campbell is growing and learning every day! She’s STILL not rolling, which honestly kind of bugs me. It’s not that she can’t; she just doesn’t want to! But she’s sitting up great, and she can bear her entire weight on her legs. I just think she’d have more fun if she would roll. My favorite accomplishment of Campbell’s this month is that she’s started to give kisses! They’re pretty hit or miss right now, and sometimes I’m not sure if it’s really a kiss or not, but I’ll take ‘em. She’s gotten enough kisses over the last 7 months that she knows what they are, that’s for sure!

Places She Went: Christmas fell during this month, so she’s done lots of local travel. I think the only new place she’s been this month is to my step-sister’s home. Michele and her husband, Denny, have two kids: Clint is 5 and Lia is 9 months old. It was so much fun to see Campbell playing with Lia…I hope they’ll grow up to be good friends.

Special Friends: This wasn’t the first time that Campbell met Lia, but I think it’s the first time she was ever aware of her! Campbell was amazed at all of the things Lia can do: roll, crawl, scoot, pull up, cruise. I’m hoping that it might light a fire under Campbell and get her going!

Baby Babbles: Oh, my! Our girl is really chattering now! One night I had to work late, so David picked Campbell up from Ms. Gayle’s. When I got home, he said, “When I got there, I was sure that there was another kid there because of all the talking going on!” But nope…it was just Campbell. That day, she started to really babble, instead of what I would consider cooing. Now she’s saying “dah-dah-dah-dah-dah” pretty consistently.

And now, a few lot of pictures of my sweet baby girl. Oh, how l love this girl!