8 months!

Rolling everywhere!

At 5 months, Miranda had her first taste of solid food: bananas, fed to her by her big sister! She wasn’t sure at first, but much to my surprise, she actually LOVED rice cereal and some baby food purees. She preferred sweet fruits and veggies (bananas, peaches, squash, carrots and sweet potatoes) and physically shuttered at the taste of pureed peas.
Natalie helping feed her little sister
Not so sure….
Yum yum!
Girl with Carrot III

She started scooting around like a little walrus at 6 months, before she could even sit up. Then she started sitting, then army crawling. By 7 months she was crawling (proper-style!) all over and now at 8 months she’s pulling herself up and cruising a bit. We had to lower her crib mattress she was pulling up and she finally is sleeping without being swaddled. Miranda is already done with pureed foods, and will try almost anything you put in front of her, provided she can feed herself. The other day she ate an entire half of a grilled cheese sandwich.
Sitting pretty
Happy with Will

Time to lower the mattress!

In terms of vital statistics, at her 6 month check-up we learned that Miranda has grown to be 28 inches tall and weighed 18 pounds, 6 ounces. That put her in the 90% for height and the 75% for weight. At 8 months, she finally cut her first tooth—the bottom middle one. And she learned to clap and/or sign “more”. We can’t figure out if she’s doing one or both. If she’s only doing one of those things, I really don’t know which it is.

Watching the big kids One of Miranda’s favorite thing to do at the park is to stand and bang on the metal slides.
Dining al fresco
Observer

Miranda loves the water and enjoys taking baths in the big tub with her sister. Already in the “search-and-destroy” phase of babyhood, Miranda’s other favorite activities include pulling books off the shelves and magnets off the refrigerator, and make general ruckus. She will play independently, but also loves to snuggle. Her temperament is even and to get her to smile, all you have to do is look at her. Miranda especially loves her big sister—no one can get her to laugh like Natalie can. We love our “little bug,” as we affectionately call her, she has added so much joy to our family!
Weeeeee!
Park baby

Happy 4 Months Miranda!

On the day Miranda turned 4 months old, I put her down in the playroom on her back. When I came back in the room, she had rolled onto her tummy and was looking quite proud of herself, as you can see in the photo above. Miranda has also discovered her feet and loves to grab them when she’s laying on her back. Sometimes she’s successful in getting her toes into her mouth!

At 4 months old, Miranda is a joy. She’s happy to play with toys, ride in her stroller, or hang out in the beco. She’s waking up a little more often at night, courtesy of the 4 month sleep regression, but is consistently sleeping in her crib for naps and at night. Miranda loves her big sister, as evidenced by her wide grins when she sees Natalie.

Miranda is happy nearly all of time—even today after having four shots, she was only mildly fussy. Traveling in the car is improving. The one frustrating thing is that she has learned to pull her binky out of her mouth. She’s working on it, but still doesn’t have the hand-eye coordination to put it back in. I suspect that once she master’s that, we can stop swaddling her for sleep.

We took her to the doctor today for her 4 month check up. The doctor says she’s doing great. Miranda is now:

26.5 inches (97%)
15 pounds, 1 ounce (90%)

Miranda at 3 Months

It’s hard to believe that three months have passed since Miranda was born! She is such a sweet baby—almost always smiling, even when she starts getting hungry or tired. She’s easily soothed and easy to put to sleep. When Miranda does get hungry or tired, she doesn’t so much cry as get agitated and frantically move her arms and legs. Chris first observed this about two months ago when Miranda was laying on her changing table and I was walking in and out of the room. Whenever I left the room, Miranda would start moving as if she was trying to get up and find me. As soon as she could see me, her whole body calmed down. She is the same way now, flailing around when she needs something, then becoming quiet and still as soon as her needs are met.

Miranda at 3 Months

Miranda at 3 Months

Miranda is getting nice and chubby, as evidenced by the fact that I can’t get my hand around her thigh anymore! And all from Mama’s homemade milk! I wasn’t able to stick to the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation of “nothing but breast milk for the first 6 months” with Natalie, who I think had her first taste of formula when she was less than one month old. So I’m very proud to say that Miranda has been exclusively breast fed so far. I’m hoping to be able to continue that once I return to work next month, but I’m not going to beat myself up if I need to supplement. Luckily, Miranda takes a bottle without complaint and had a fine first day at Melissa’s this month as a test run.

Miranda is very strong, pushing her chest and head up during tummy time and already doing stomach crunches when she’s laying on her back. In the car, I can’t see her anymore in the mirror because she leans as far forward as she possibly can in her 5-point harness. Although the car still isn’t her favorite place to be, traveling has been vastly improved since we switched her to a convertible car seat. Some toys hanging from plastic rings have helped her be more settled in the car as well.

In honor of her 3-month birthday, we gave Miranda a proper bath for the first time in….? Is that bad when you can’t remember when you last bathed your child? Eh….I read that bathing too often can irritate the skin, so we took a break from tub baths for a while. I was giving her nightly sponge baths with clear water and then using california baby super sensitive skin lotion to help clear up her eczema. There are too many variables to correctly identify the cure, but Miranda’s skin has been looking perfect lately. No more eczema, yay! And after shampooing, Miranda’s hair looks about 2 shades lighter!
Tummy time Miranda I
Tummy time Miranda II
Tummy time Miranda III

We continue to feel so lucky that our daughters have a lot of genuine affection toward each other and hope that continues to be the case as they get older. Miranda loves to watch her big sister and both of their faces light up when they see each other.

Happy Sisters

Sideways smile

Miranda had a great two month check-up today. She is now 12 pounds, 10 ounces and 23.5 inches long. That’s a gain of four pounds and two inches since her birth and is now in the 90th percentile for both height and weight. Dr. Stephen wasn’t at all concerned about the rash on her face, but thinks it may be a combination of baby acne and eczema. Although she thinks it will clear up on its own, she recommended putting aquaphor cream on it 2 or 3 times a day for a week.

Miranda got four shots and one oral vaccine. I gave her tylenol in advance and she actually didn’t cry for the first three shots. Based on her screams, the fourth shot must have stung a lot! She calmed down surprisingly quickly, and only got fussy four hours later when the tylenol wore off.
Silly baby
Smily girl

7 Weeks II

The only concern we have is a rash on her face, which I think is baby acne or perhaps prickly heat. It doesn’t seem to bother her, it just looks red and irritated. We see Dr. Stephen for her 2 month well-visit on Tuesday, so hopefully we’ll get some answers about what it is and how to best treat it.
7 Weeks III

Happy To be 1 month old!!

These are her statistics at 1 month old:
weight: 10 pounds, 6 ounces (75-90%)
height: 22.25 inches (75-90%)

Dr. Stephen was impressed that Miranda is already putting weight on her legs, is very alert, and smiling a lot. In the last month of getting to know her, we’ve learned that Miranda is easy to soothe, and easy to put to sleep (usually, unless she has gas or is overtired). She often smiles and laughs in her sleep, which melts our hearts.

The sleep formula swaddle, pacifer, bouncy seat, sleep sheep ocean sounds

Nursing is going well after a few weeks of pain. I was worried about getting thrush as I had with Natalie, but the pain is gone now, so I think my body was just getting adjusted. Nursing seems to be separate from sleeping for Miranda, which I’m happy about since it appears that I won’t be the only person with the ability to get her to sleep. Miranda likes to be rocked!! She takes a pacifier!! She has adorable hair:
Mom, please fix my hair!!! It sticks up in the back all on its own!

Miranda hates being strapped in the car seat and although she occasionally falls asleep in the car, she doesn’t stay asleep once the car stops. She doesn’t spit up (figures since I bought a ton of burp cloths, beyond the ones we received as gifts!). She is a champion pooper and often goes through a few outfits per day. Luckily, she likes taking a bath, although she hates being cold and often cries when we take her out. Overall, Miranda is fairly calm and laid back. We are enjoying her babyhood, because we know how fleeting it is!

Smiley

Natalie is growing and learning at such a tremendous rate now that more and more I’m feeling like I can’t convey how amazing she is. Even with a lengthy monthly update, I feel like I’m not capturing Natalie’s ever changing developments. I suppose that’s the problem with kids—it’s impossible to express their essence, let alone capture it. So, if you haven’t spent time with Natalie lately, you’re missing out on an incredibly fun, silly, loving, smart little girl.

The best news this month is that Natalie’s sleep is improving! Although it still takes her a long time to actually fall asleep, she’s started falling asleep without nursing and sleeping in 5-6 hour stretches!!!! And a major milestone happened at daycare last week: Natalie fell asleep for her nap completely on her own—no bottle, back-rubbing or anything!!

Natalie has been exploring new forms of artistic expression this month. She loves painting pumpkins and using glue sticks:

After going through a short phase where she wasn’t as interested as usual in reading, this last month we’ve been reading her at least 10 books a day. As we read books that she’s heard many times, Natalie’s reciting a lot of words as we read. Brown Brown Bear What do You Hear? she can recite completely from memory and many of her books she can pick up and recite the words on the page by looking at the picture.

This month Natalie learned to climb the ladder at the park all by herself:

We had a wonderful Halloween! Natalie really enjoyed wearing her costume and even wanted to keep wearing it the day after Halloween. Here she is helping prepare the pumpkins for carving:

As a way of explaining why Natalie couldn’t have pasta the minute she requested it, Grandma had Natalie help her cook it. Natalie enjoyed the process so much (she actually sat and waited for the water to boil!) that we started to find more things for her to do in the kitchen. I was hoping that getting Natalie involved with preparing the food that she would be more likely to eat it, but so far that hasn’t been the case. We’ve found that it takes introducing a new food a number of times before Natalie will eat it. This month she finally ate grilled cheese and pierogies for the first time. Here she is helping “paint” the marinade on tofu. She actually likes tofu a lot, but not with sauce on it.

Helping prep the cauliflower (and then refused to try it!):

A couple of final tidbits:

Natalie loves to wear hats and as you can see if several of the photos in this post, she is especially attached to the beautiful red and yellow one knit by her Auntie Bethany.

Natalie learned to give kisses by smacking her lips, rather that just saying “mmmmmaaaaaah!”

One morning, Natalie woke up and asked, “Where Daddy go?” Then she picked up the covers, peeked under them and said, “Nope!”

In the last month Natalie has accomplished some pretty cool developmental tasks. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she’s made all these connections since moving to a daycare where she feels comfortable and happy. She can identify almost the whole alphabet and sing the ABCs (of course L M N O P are a little mumbly). Natalie can count to 20. After a couple of months of saying sentences here and there, I think we can officially say that Natalie is “speaking in sentences.” Sometimes her grammar needs work; for example, she says, “I turn it on, light!” This morning, after I accidentally stepped on her foot, Natalie said to me, “I sorry, Mommy!” She can put some of her shoes on all by herself. And after months and months of trying, Natalie learned to jump!

After seeing how much Natalie likes playing with dolls at Melissa’s house, we bought Natalie her first official baby doll. She is doing a lot of pretend play with dolls—feeding them, putting them to sleep, etc. But she still sometimes prefers to read to her troll, or give it (her? him?) a bottle:

She can’t yet modulate pitch, but she can recite the words from lots of songs: Happy Birthday, Rubber Ducky, I’m a Little Teapot, Ring Around the Rosie, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Five Little Monkeys, and We are the Dinosaurs. In the car, Natalie requests the songs she wants to hear by name. She also often requests that the music be “loud!”

Sleep continues to be challenging (we really could write several posts, but it’s too depressing to write and to read about). We’re making some progress in terms of implementing and sticking to a bedtime routine (bath, bottle & books, nurse to sleep) but it still takes a long time (averaging 45 minutes) for Natalie to fall asleep. And she still wakes up at least a few times a night. For about two weeks, Natalie was sleeping for a 4 hour stretch at the beginning of the night. We considered that a great improvement, which should indicate how bad things have been.

Overall, Natalie has been much happier in the last month (again, since we made the daycare switch). She’s communicating better, is less clingy, and playing more independently. She’s like a little monkey, just bursting with energy and love and hugs.

Here is Natalie showing off her skills with letters and numbers:

Letters and Numbers from nataliecaroline on Vimeo.

Lately it seems like Natalie learns so much in one day it’s hard to keep track of it all. She’s using more and more 3-word pseudo sentences. These phrases tend to contain nouns and sometimes adjectives, but she often leaves out verbs and connecting words. For example, this morning when I offered her toast, Natalie replied, “no…toast…Nah.” (“Nah” is what Natalie calls herself, although lately she sometimes says “Nanny.”) The pauses between the words let me know that she’s aware that more is needed to make a full sentence. Either way she gets her meaning across. A few more examples:
“Mommy, Daddy…home”
“Mommy…blue shirt”
“Tillman…mess…rug”
“no, no, Tillman…Nah’s” (Tillman often tries to eat Natalie’s food)
“Nah…shoes…off”
“No…cream…butt!” (Natalie has developed a strong aversion to diaper cream)

One of our recent conversations illustrates her ever increasing ability to communicate her thoughts and wishes:
In the car, Natalie asked, “animal crackers?”
Mommy, who has never bought animal crackers, replied, “We don’t have any, honey. We have pretzels or raisins. Do you eat animal crackers at Melissa’s house?”
Natalie answers, “Yeah!….Animal crackers…Nah’s…house?”

Another “big girl” milestone—drinking out of a regular cup! She has been able to do this for a while, but we just started letting her have a non-sippy cup more often.

Natalie has been doing a lot of pretend play lately. One of her favorite games is to take a bag, and say, “bye-bye” as she leaves the room. Then she comes back and very grandly says, “HI!” When asked where she went, Natalie says “Shopping!” We usually say, “Oh! What did you buy?” Natalie usually reports, “crackers!” or sometimes, “Banas!” (bananas) or “boo-bayees” (blueberries) or “bed” (bread). Then she goes around to each person in the room and pretend feeds us whatever food she’s bought.
Here she is getting her (reusable of course!!) shopping bag ready:

She’s also added a few “jokes” to her repertoire. Not jokes exactly, but things she says that show her sense of humor. A couple examples:
Mommy, pointing to something green, asks, “Natalie, what color is this?”
Natalie, snickering, says, “Blue!”
Mommy replies, “Really? That’s blue?”
Natalie says, as if Mommy is completely absurd, “No! Green!!”

Daddy, pouring himself a cup asks, “Natalie, do you want coffee, too?”
Natalie, looking at Daddy like he’s crazy, replies, “No!”
Daddy says, “Oh, Natalie doesn’t drink coffee?”
Natalie replies, “No! Daddy…Mommy…coffee.”

This morning, Chris took these picture of Natalie trying on some of Daddy’s shirts:

On July 22, Natalie said “I woove woo” for the first time.

Now that Natalie has gotten through her bath aversion, we’ve settled into a routine of nightly baths. Natalie insists on washing herself! If we try to do it for her, she fusses—she prefers if we put soap in her hands and she wash each body part herself. Chris usually bathes her, which is a nice way for them have some daddy/daughter time. As much as I hesitate to jinx us by saying this, getting Natalie to sleep has been much easier and more consistent since starting the routine.

I scored a turtle shaped sandbox on Craig’s List for $20! Personally I hate sand, but when I saw how long Natalie was happily occupied at the beach, I knew it would be a good toy for her. She got so engrossed that we couldn’t get her to look up to take a picture.