Sophia 6 & 7 Months

Almost 8 months...I tell you. It is killing me that they blocked blogger at work.  And with 2 kids at home, it is nearly impossible to update as often as I would like. So here I am, blowing the dust off my blog.  I actually wrote a majority of this post when she was actually 6 months, but will just combine the 2 months now.

Sophia is learning so much everyday.  It is so fun watching her grow and I feel like if I blink, I am going to miss something.

At 6 months:

• She weighed about 16 lbs. at her 6 month check up.  I have how long she is written down, but of course I can't find it. She is pretty close to Emmy's length at this age.  She is in the 50th for both, if I remember correctly.
• She is in size 2 diapers, but they are getting a little snug. By the time we are done with this big box, she will probably be ready to bump up to size 3.
• She is still in 3-6 month/6 month clothes.  I forgot how weird the sizes can be.  I think if it is "6 Month" it really is 3-6 month.
• She sits up really well unassisted and is really close to pulling into a sitting position from laying down.
• She is for the most part "crawling". She can go a few steps on her hands and knees and then resumes army crawling or plank crawling to get where she needs to go. 
• Since learning to crawl, she is into everything.  She really like to explore things.
• She talks a ton.  We have gotten a few "mamas" out of her, but for the most part she babbles "dada".
• She seriously NEVER cries.  EVER. Instead she yells.  She sounds like an old man yelling. 
• She is still eating about the same as last month, although she prefers solids over milk.  I know that food is supposed to be for learning and not till nutrition until 1, but our doctor is ok if she cuts back on her milk and eats more solids. We are hoping to keep it to at least 20 oz. of milk a day.  I bet she gets about that, but it's hard to tell since she nurses. 
• She eats 2 cubes (I made baby food so two ice cube portions) every day for lunch of what ever Steph chooses for the day. I made pumpkin, peas, mixed veggies, mixed veggies with brown rice, and she has organic bananas or organic apple sauce.  She also eats smaller peices of whatever Emmy eats, like pastas, toast, etc. 
• She loves puffs and mum mums.  She is still working on her pincer grip and making it to her mouth.  She "chews" each puff and its adorable. 
• She loves to blow raspberries and click her tongue.
• EVERYTHING goes in her mouth.
• Sleep--Sleep got really bad a few weeks ago.  I had surgery a few weeks ago (details for another post) and that seemed to really throw Sophia off.  I was feeding her at 7, putting her down for the night and going in to top her off around 10 every night, in hopes to get her to sleep for a longer stretch.  For several weeks this worked great.  I fed at 10 and she would sleep till 6.  Then after my surgery, Zig would have to go in with me and hand her to me to feed and it would wake her up a little more than normal. She would still go down ok, but she started waking up at 2-3 consistently.  Sometimes she would wake at 12.  And the only way to get her to go back to bed quickly was to feed her.  Now, we can't complain.  Neither of our kids have ever woken up in the middle of the night and stayed up.  For the most part, they'd eat really quick or require a quick back rub and doze of again. BUT, Sophia is capable of going much longer stretches, than she has been pulling lately.  So we started to do a modified Ferber and let's just say things are going much better.
• As for getting to sleep, Sophia is a dream.  I literally feed her, lay her down wide awake and she puts herself to sleep.  No paci, no back rubbing, nothing.  She means business when 7 pm hits. 

At 7 months:

• We haven't had her weighed since her 6 month appointment, but I am guessing she is in the 18 lb. range.
• She is in size 2 diapers still.  Man that box lasted a while!  Thank you Amazon! We will move to size 3 here shortly. 
• She still fits in 3-6 and 6 month clothes, but we started packing those up and are transitioning her to 6-9 and 9 months with the change in the season.
• She is a crawling MACHINE.  She is all over the place.
• She can pull up into a sitting position
• She is the EASIEST baby.  Seriously. I thought Emmy was easy, but Sophia is so calm and just goes with the flow.
• She eats 2 full meals a day of solid foods.  Still purees, but we are starting finger foods now.  She eats steamed veggies, pastas, small pieces of meat, puffs and yogurt bites.
• She still nurses in the am and pm and has 2, 4oz. bottles a day at school.  I am guessing she really only gets between 16-20 oz. 
• She loves to growl and is so silly.
• She sleeps all night.  We usually put her down at 7 and she will get up between 5:30 and 6, but most mornings I wake her to eat. She still puts herself to sleep no problem, even now that she can pull into a sitting position.
• She loves cords, remotes, dog toys and shoes.
• She ADORES Emily.  She loves to smile at her and laugh at her. 
• She babbles a lot and has the sweetest little growl. 
• Still no teeth!!

We are really settling in as a family of 4. Emily has been such an amazing help over the last month.  She seems so grown up! 

Sorry for the combined post. I am hitting post now. Last time I tried to save the post till I pulled the pictures off my camera and here I am, now 2 months later still waiting to plug in the SD card and dowload them.  Pictures will be up this week.  I will have to do an update on Emmy post here soon too! She is a total ham.  A definite toddler, crazy, head spinning tantrums and all, but still my sweet girl. 

5 Months

Sophia has been 5 months now for over two weeks!  She is actually closer to 6 months at this point! Bah!! Where is the time going??!!

This months photo session was a tough one.  Soph is the SMILIEST baby on earth, but she just does not trust technology.  We have to sneak it up on her.  She will be grinning like a fool and then the second you pull out the camera, she is straight faced as can be. 

Case in point

She is also entirely too obsessed with her feet and would rather chew on those, than smile for the camera.

We got some pretty funny out takes

And we managed some smiles, though most are not at the camera

This month was a fun one for us! I will try to keep the stats to where she was 2 weeks ago.

• Sophia rolls EVERYWHERE.  She is all over the place.  You can set her down and 2 seconds later she is across the room.
• She also has mastered a weird caterpillar, army crawl kind of move.  She uses this technique to get as close to Emily as possible.  She drags her little body over to where ever Emily is.
• To say that she loves Emily is a HUGE understatement.  She is OBSESSED with her.  She would crawl in Em's skin if she could.  She loves to watch Emmy, and just be around her.  She smiles constantly at her, laughs and will pull herself to where ever Em is just to be by her side.  Poor Emily is smothered by Sophia, but she is such a good girl and is so patient with her. 
• She eats 2 oz of a veggie at lunch at school and 2 oz, plus a bowl of cereal for dinner.  She loves her veggies.  So far she seems to enjoy squash and sweet potatoes the best, but really has liked everything we have offered so far.  We are going to try carrots and then some fruits over the next few weeks and then we will start on the more solid solids.  I gave her a pizza crust the other night and she was in HEAVEN.
• She can sit up for about 10 seconds before toppling over.  Her cheeks kind of gravitate to the floor and she is way to into her feet to be bothered with sitting up.
• She nurses 2-3 times a day and drinks about 2 5oz bottles at school.  She sometimes gets a nursing session in, in the middle of the night too. She has cut back on the milk quite a bit, but she is not missing any meals.
• She weighed 15lbs 4 oz when I took her to see the pedi about 2 weeks ago. 
• No teeth yet, but lots of signs that they may be right around the corner
• She is still in size 2 diapers, 3-6month clothes.
• Sleep...Oh sleep...She is doing really well.  I think she is starting to wake now more out of habit, than necessity, but she only stays up for a very short time and is right back to bed.  We are starting to see if we can soothe her by offering a paci and rubbing her back, nursing as a last resort.  She is doing much better.  If I nurse her before bed she usually will sleep through the night, sometimes waking up around 5, but there are some nights where she gets up at 2 or 3 to chat our ears off.
• She is so happy, and so so easy.  We took a couple trips this month and she transitioned amazingly.
• At home she naps in her crib.  At school we are working on it, but sleeps great in the swing.  She takes 2 naps a day. One shorter one in the morning (about an hour) and one long one in the afternoon (2-3 hours).
• She loves her toys and reaching for anything and everything in sight. 
• Her eye is looking so much better.  It still gets a little goopy during the day, but not as bad as it had been.

Well, that's all I can think of for now!  Here are a couple more pictures from the month.

 Please ignore how awful I look in this picture.  No make up Sunday.  Soph looks to cute not to share!



Baby Laughs

Here is a video of our silly Sophia laughing.  She is such a ham and totally sounds like an old man.  She was supposed to be napping, but everytime we put her paci in or looked at her, she cracked up. These are the laughs I also get every night when I change her into her jammies because she is so ticklish.  I love it!  Happy Thursday everyone! 

P.S. Her 5 month post and some family trip posts to come next week!

Solids

We recently started Sophia on Solids right around the time she turned about 4 1/2 months old.  We first started with cereal/oatmeal and she did great. We are going to slowly start introducing vegetables, similar to what we did with Emily and then when she can sit up unsupported we will start baby led weaning with her.  I talk a little bit about the process here.  I don't really like the word "weaning" because we are by no means weaning her from breast milk.  We are supporters of the whole "food is fun till 1" ideology, and will continue to offer milk as her main source of nutrition.  So I will refer to it more as baby led solids.  :) I didn't do a great job of documenting our journey of BLS with Emmy, and it's not sure likely I will with Sophia either, considering my current track record, but I will do the best I can.  So far Soph seems to really be enjoying food thus far.  She chows down on her rice cereal and oatmeal.  We can't shovel it in fast enough. As for veggies, she has only had avocado (hates) and peas (so far so good).  I'll continue to introduce a new veggie every 4 days to make sure there is no reaction, which I really don't anticipate and then probably around 6 months, we are game on for BLS.  I am excited.  It was really fun to watch Emmy explore her solids on her own and it's amazing what she was capable of eating by herself. 

Here are some pictures!

Sophia's Christening-The Pictures

Sophia's Christening

On the 4th of July, we baptized Sophia in a small ceremony at my mom's house. Our cousin Todd is a pastor and is amazing. We are so lucky to have him in our lives and the ceremony was so personal to us, because he knows us. I have a few pictures, but my battery died on my camera, so the rest are on my brother's camera.

We chose Rich and Rebecca as her Godparents. This was a big, hard decision for us to make because there are a lot of people in our lives who could fulfill that role. We chose them because they seriously do so much for us and for our girls. They came running at 1 am, when I went in to labor to stay with Emmy, they always come to the house to watch the girls, they spent the weekend at our house when we went out of town for a friend's wedding to stay with Em. Rebecca is always on the floor or in the princess castle playing with Em. It's like they know when we need a break and they pick up and take charge, giving baths, feeding dinner etc. They take care of my girls, like they are their own and I know that both girls, will always feel comfortable talking to them and going to them for advice.  And really they are here.  We are super fortunate because we have a ton of family in town and we get a lot of help.  Our girls are good, because they have such a large family presence and consistency in their lives. 

A tradition that Zig's sister created was for all our kids to be baptized in Dad's Christening gown, which is over 60 years old.  It is beautiful and its an heriloom!  We first baptized Emily in it a few years ago, then Livi, and now Sophia.  I am not sure why Ryan wasn't baptized in it though.  Jenn is going to have the dates of each baptism sewn into the gown.  It is a beautiful tradition and I am so glad Jenn decided to share this with us.  She has always been so thoughtful.  I really admire that about her.  Needless to say though, Sophia "christened" the Christening gown with a big blow out. Awesome. Thankfully, we acted quick and was able to get it out.  Anyway, here are some pictures, and there are many more to come!

4 months!

Sophia is 4 months old!  She is seriously the most calm baby ever.  Really. I am not just saying that because I am biased.  She is just so super chill, it's awesome.  That being said, when she does cry, it's rough. She can be really hard to calm down if and when she gets upset. 

We had Sophia's 4 month check up last week. She is right on track and our Ped is very happy with her progress and how she is meeting her milestones.  All this time I have thought that Sophie is so much bigger than Em, but percentile wise, they are exactly the same.  Looking back at Emmy's records, she really didn't start dropping on the curve till about 6 months though. Hopefully Sophia continues being such a good eater.  Here are some stats from Sophia's checkup:

• She weighs 14 lbs even.  She is in the 50th percentile for weight (she is a little bit heavier than Emmy, I think Em was about 13 and a half pounds at this age.)
• She is 24 1/4 inches long. 50-75th percentile in height (she is about 1/4 inch shorter than Emmy)

I think the big difference between the girls in that Emmy was longer and has always carried her weight in her belly.  Sophia is a little shorter and carries her weight mostly in her cheeks, but also spread out evenly through the rest of her.  She has those amazing arm and leg rolls. 

I was seriously AWFUL about taking pictures this month. It was hard because it was my first full month back at work, so there weren't a ton of opportunities to do so. Boo.  June was a good month for us though.  Sophia is really developing her personality.  She is super happy, not greedy with her smiles at all, and very chatty.  She is so super sweet!  Here is what she has been up to this month.

• She has been meeting all her milestones for her age. She reaches for toys, can clasp her hands, roll from back to belly, and she puts everything in her mouth, to name a few.
• She drools a ton, but it's just the age.  Emmy did the same thing and we didn't get teeth for her, for a few months down the line.
• She wears size 2 diapers.  After many blowouts trying to use up the size 1's we had, we just decided to move on.
• She is still on the same eating schedule that she was on last month (nurse at 6, then eat 4 1/2-5 oz bottles every 3 hours during the day, and then nurse 1-2 more times before bedtime)
• Bedtime is pretty close to 7 every night.  She turns into a grump if we push it back much more.  This was the best decision we made for our kids.  Early bed time.  It keeps us sane.  It does suck that we only get about 2 hours to spend with them in the evening, but I would rather play super hard for those 2 hours, than have a grumpy baby/kid to deal with by keeping them up later.  And it's important for Zig and I to have that time to spend together each day. 
• She still fits in her 0-3 month clothes, but they are starting to get snug, so we have started putting those away, and phasing in the 3-6 month clothes. 
• She sleeps from 7pm-2am, wakes up for a quick feed, and then I wake her up at 6 to eat again before I pump. By definition, she is sleeping through the night. She has hit the 4 month wakeful period, and while sometimes I hate waking up to walk to her room to offer the paci, she is so super smiley and happy to see me, that it kinda makes it worth it.  We are just being patient and reading her cues.  If she wants to eat, I am going to feed her.  If she continues to wake a lot at night, we will reassess it at around 6 months and make a decision on if we want to try and do some sleep training, so she can really learn to self soothe. With Emmy, by the time I finished reading the Ferber book, she was sleeping again.  At her age too, it's totally understandable that she is waking because she is so much more aware of her surroundings.
• We starting letting her sleep unswaddled, because she really didn't seem to care either way, and I figured it was easier to break the habit before she got to used to it.  She was still sleeping the same either way.  However, I started swaddling again because she goes down much easier.  Otherwise she has long (loud) conversations with her hands before going to bed. We are going to stop using the swaddleme blankets and switch to receiving ones though, that way if she breaks free, it's no big deal.
• We pierced her ears.  I know this can be a hot topic, but it was a choice that Zig and I made.  We did it with Emmy and never had any problems and now, she is super proud of them.  Soph cried for all of 2 seconds and then was back to her happy self.  That being said, they turned out crooked, noticeably, so we took one out and are going to get it fixed this weekend.  It sucks, I know, but I still don't regret our decision.  I have heard horror stories about kids getting them done later in life and I figured I would get it done before she even realized they were there and was less likely to mess with them.  To each their own. I think the sound of the piercing gun is what scared her anyway. Sweet little pearls for a sweet little girl. :)

That's all that I can think of for now on the stat front.  June was a great month!  We are really enjoying being a family of 4!