7 months!

holy cow, can you believe it's been 7 months (and 1 day) since my sweet, sweet baby tess was born?? for some reason, 7 months seems SOOO OLD! maybe because it's now older than half a year? i have no idea, but wow!

i've been trying to write this post for 5 days now, and life keeps getting in the way, but we got the coolest 7-month-iversary present on saturday (when she was technically 7 months and 3 days) - baby girl started crawling! she looks like an inch-worm, and she still prefers that you just pick her up and put her close to whatever she wanted, but i'm so excited that she's made this milestone! we tried to get a video, but she started fussing during it, so i'll wait till we have a better one. the funniest thing is that the one thing that motivated her to actually crawl wasn't mommy or daddy, or even something really cool like the dog... it was my coffee mug! some days only coffee can motivate me to move too! like mother like daughter, i guess.

other fun facts about the 7 month turtle:
-she loves sweet foods like oatmeal, prunes, peaches, apples, and squash, and has tepid (at best) feelings towards veggis like carrots, green peas, and green beans.
-she loves chewing on things. some of her favorites include any fruit mommy is eating, her pink pleather mary-janes, and her new rubber giraffe that nana bought her.
-she picked out her first baby doll at the store. it has long blonde hair and a pink dress. she cried and was afraid of most of the other ones, especially the freaky ones that move giggle creepily when you walk by.
-she has begun yelling and shrieking in response to excitement - at parties, to mommy, daddy, nana, and grandpa, and it's so loud it'll hurt your ears.
-she is becoming more selective about who she will go to and be content with in groups. she prefers people she knows and those who are interesting to look at but not too in-your-face.
-she hasn't been babbling much in a while, which makes mommy nervous, but all the other experienced mothers out there are telling me it's because she's working on so many physical milestones (like crawling!) and trying to pull up and walk.
-she can sit up well on her own now, and doesn't seem to notice when she tips over and SLAMS herself into the floor. it freaks mommy out!
-she loves music and pianos/keyboards, so we've gotten her one of those to play with.
-she has a book called "whose nose is that?" which she loves, because it has noses of animals which you lift to reveal the whole animal. her favorites are the puppy, pig, horse, duck, and cat.
-she loves textures, so she enjoys books like "tails" with different textured animal tails, and a new one we got her with textures around town (like a brick, a sidewalk, a tree, etc.) she also loves looking at and touching different carpets and the wicker laundry baskets.
-she is wearing clothing anywhere between 3-12 months, depending on the brand, but most of them are in the 6-9 month range.
-i have no idea how much she weighs or how tall she is now, other than to say she seems HUUUUGE to me!


getting into a daily schedule and nightly sleep schedule has been challenging this month. we start getting pretty established, and then mommy goes to work and that messes it all up. she usually likes to nap in the morning sometime between 10 and 11:30am and then again between 2-4:30pm, and occasionally she'll take another one during dinner, but that usually messes up the night time if she does.

she has a nightly bedtime routine that starts with a solid food meal around 7:30, followed by a bath (usually by daddy), a last nursing, and then she goes down into her co-sleeper around 8:30 or 9. recently, we're trying to wean her off night nursings so she'll sleep longer, but it hasn't been going too smoothly. i hear it takes a little, but two nights in a row she woke up at 1:30am and wanted to stay awake until 3am. also, each night before i go to work, she doesn't want to sleep at all. so sunday night, i got less than 3 hours of sleep because tess and i didn't get to bed (and sleep) until after 3am, and i'm supposed to get up at 5:45am. i slept through my alarm and was 30 mins late for work. hopefully soon this sleeping thing will get worked out. we're trying to have andrew comfort her during the night now, because when i'm near her, all she wants to do is nurse herself to sleep, and she refuses to just be patted back to sleep by me, but she'll do it for andrew. i know we just have to stick with it, but i'd really love to sleep for more than 3 hours straight during the night!

we have also started using formula occasionally, when we're out and about, because it's easier than always nursing or keeping breast milk frozen or cool. it also makes me feel a little better because i'm not doing any iron supplements with her (don't really thing she needs them), but the formula has iron added, so she's getting some that way. however, that doesn't seem to agree with her digestive system so well, because recently she's gone from pooping once or twice a day to much MUCH less frequently. eek! we keep loading her up with prunes, but i may have to find out if there's anything else we can do, as she seems quite uncomfortable at times.

well, she's awake now, so i must go play! ... and clean the house, and do laundry, and make lunch, etc, etc, etc.