Elsie Marie - 7 Months

Well I know this is coming a bit late (She turned 7 months on July 14th) but we have had a busy couple of weeks!  Most of this text was written on or before the 14th, let me tell you things have changed already in just the past week!  I can't wait to share with you on that later.  Here is the official 7 Month post :)

This month flew by!  I seriously feel like I was just posting about 6 Months.  It has been a busy non-routine month for us.  With the trip to Idaho, a weekend visit to MN, and the Fourth of July in the mix I feel like the month has been a bit chaotic-but positive chaotic of that is possible.

So I don't have an official weight or the scale anymore but we did have her in to the Dr. last week (more on that later) and she was 16 lbs 8 oz.  In three weeks time she seriously gained over a pound-let's just say it is vacation weight ;).  No seriously though I feel like this is the fastest she put weight on.  I am guessing the transition to solids has something to do with it.  I think she just wears 6-9 months clothes now.  I think there are some 6M carters clothes she can fit in but not much anymore.  One of the things she outgrew that I wasn't expecting was her white sunhat.  I brought it with for her 6M pictures and it hardly fit on her head...let me take that back, I tried to put it on, she screamed and I couldn't figure out why.  After pictures I found out it is because it was so tight and didn't fit.  Poor girl.

I am not sure what is so exciting but she spent a lot of time looking up :)

So she has been on a whole month of solids now in addition to her bottles.  We are still trying to get into a good eating routine and get it figured out to get all this food in during the day.  I have to be careful when to feed her the solids so that she will still drink her milk and get enough of that in since that is still where she gets most of her nutrients from.  As of now she is eating brown rice cereal, sweet potatoes, apples (which she doesn't like), peas, carrots, pears, and bananas.  It seems like it is taking forever with the whole feed 4 times before trying something new rule.  I also didn't want to try anything new while on vacation.  She eats really well and I think she really loves the rice cereal.  She just devours that.  I am not yet sure but we are wondering if she had a bit of a reaction to the jarred bananas.  2 of the 3 times I fed it to her she got a little puffy by her eyes.  We haven't given her anymore for a couple of weeks but tomorrow we are going to try one more time with fresh bananas to just make sure.  So far we have just been doing jarred baby food.  I try to buy Earth's Best brand when I can.  I am hoping this next month I will find the time to make our own baby food since she is/will be eating more of a variety of food.  Up next to try though is Avocado.  As  for breastmilk/formula she is drinking anywhere between 20-28 oz a day.  Some days it is a struggle to get her drink that much, other days she just downs it.  I guess she knows what she wants right?  I am still pumping which means I made it a whole month past my goal!  Two weeks ago I started going down to three times a day.  So it is about 12-15 oz a day.  More on the 12 end of it.  So still about 50:50 ratioI will be surprised if I am still at it for Elsie's 8 Month post but we shall see.

For sleep, Elsie has been all over the place.  Some nights we lay her down around 7:30 and we don't hear from her again until 6:00 the next morning.  Other nights she is up quite a few times.  Maybe 2-3 times.  We have more good nights than bad and of course I make excuses for her during her bad nights. I would say in a weeks times it is 5 good nights and two bad. We have let her cry for about 5 minutes and when we do that we have a really hard time calming her down. I do think that the worst nights are nights after she doesn't drink milk well during the day.  When she wakes up and starts crying we find her up on all fours.  I am not sure why she is like that.  Silly girl.  She is still in our room.  I keep making excuses as to why I don't want to have her in her own room yet but I know I like to be close to her, to listen for her breathing, and to be right there if she wakes looking for her pacifier.  Soon, Soon.  We still bring her into bed some mornings around 5:00 am, especially if it has been a rough night.  Naps are a whole other thing.  We are still not in a good nap routine.  Which I know some babies don't nap for two hours at a time but maybe an hour would be good for her :). Some days she will sleep a lot and some days she hardly naps at all besides a small catnap here and there.   We will continue to work on this and I am sure soon it will just click right?  

She discovered her sticker on her shirt and couldn't leave it alone.  She ended up chewing on it.  Yuk!

Elsie is developing more likes and dislikes everyday.  She LOVES her little orange and green monkey thing that came with her infant tub.  I am not sure what about it is so interesting to her.  She loves being outside.  Earlier this week we were just sitting outside the two of us and she kept looking up into the sky and getting excited.  There were birds flying around up above and I can bet that is what was so entertaining.  She loves her V-tech hide and seek bunny that she got for Christmas but that I just brought out for her.  She loves her jumper and she loves her daddy.  We are still in the phase where she gets upset if I leave the room for a minute but I think she is getting better at entertaining herself now.  She is getting so close to crawling up on all fours full time but she is mostly scooting around and army crawling.  She crawl a few steps, stop, and then drop down to an army crawl.  She is definitely moving though! Oh and she also loves climbing up onto the laundry basket, looking at what is inside it and then pulling each and everything out of it! 


This month has been a big month for our little Elsie Monster.  She has been all the way to Idaho and back, celebrated some birthdays, went golfing for the first time, went to her first storytime at the local library, and had another new friend born into this world-Finley Carlson!  We have also been to the local pool and the pool and Grandma and Grandpa Fenstra's and she loves it!!  

                      

After she sucked on her sticker I had to take it off so I threw on another shirt and took some more pictures. She loves being outside!  

Our little naturalist in the making!