7 Months

Lucy turned 7 months a couple days ago so thought I'd report on what's happening with us lately... Lucy continues to grow and develop extremely fast! She has mastered crawling, pulling up, standing while not holding on to anything (for 20 seconds or so), and is working on creeping... I think she'll be walking in no time! She still does the usually babbling (mostly screeming and grunting), nothing distinguishable yet, and she's actually been a little quieter lately (she did this when she was working on walking too... I think her brain is saying - "one skill at a time please").

She is in a bit of a transition as far as her schedule goes, some days she takes 3 naps, some days she takes 2, it all depends on how good the first two naps are and how long she last between them (some days the naps are 1.5-2hrs, some days they are more like 1hr). If she wakes from her second nap any sooner than 4pm, I know we'll need the third one that day. This all determines the number of times she eats - if there are 3 naps, she eats 5 times and if there are only 2 she eats 4 times (with solids at three of those nursings). And when I say she eats 4-5 times, I should actually say it's been 5-6 times a day because she has yet to go away from the middle of the night feeding that magically appeared when we got home from Florida last month... I thought it was vacation, I thought it was crawling, I thought it was teething... who knows! But whatever it is, it's here to stay... Lucy has been eating once around 4-5am and then keeps sleeping till about 7:30am or so. That still means she's doing an 8-10 hour stretch... so I guess I can't complain... plus I've been bringing her in to bed with me to nurse (bc I'm so sleepy) and I've been loving the extra cuddle time and the way she immediately passes out lying next to me once she's full.

Sleep continued to stink this month (carried over from last month). I'm blaming most of it on her first two teeth that appeared this month and then I think she just got used to us coming in to comfort her. Most of this month Lucy woke 3-4 times throughout the night, needing us to put her pacifier in each time. She has also been waking up mid nap about half the time needing me to put the pacifier in for her then as well.

I finally told Ben we had to do something because waking up all through out the night was driving me nuts so we finally decided to give Lucy the paci when she went to sleep but we agreed not to give it to her again throughout the night. The first night we only had one night waking (besides the feeding) and she cried for ten minutes, I went in to lay her back down and she picked the paci up and put it in on her own. The next night she started crying a couple times but each time only lasted 5 minutes or so and she comforted her self back to sleep, until about 1am - she started fussing and I turned the monitor down to make the waiting a little more bearable and ended up falling back asleep. Not sure how long the crying lasted but when I woke up an hour later it was quiet - I felt like such a bad mom for falling asleep... but I was secretly so glad I didn't have to lie awake listening to her scream! Plus, I figure she couldn't have been crying that long, otherwise I would have woken up... right?!? Night number 3 there was no crying except for her one feeding at 4:30 am... success? maybe... we'll see how things go the rest of the week... naps have still not been great.

We have gotten into the swing of things with solid foods, Lucy eats a good amount 3 times a day and seems to really like just about anything I give her. She has now tried banana, carrots, peas, plums, prunes, avocado, pumpkin, sweet potato and pears. Her favorites are the fruits and the sweet potatoes (I think she has a sweet tooth like her mama!)

She continues to be an extremely happy and smiley baby, honestly if she didn't have to sleep alone in her crib, I doubt she'd ever cry.

On a mom front - things have been going really well as I get more and more used to this mom thing... Lucy continues to surprise me daily, but I think I've gotten used to the surprises and have become a lot more relaxed about her schedule (I think anyway... Ben can correct me if I haven't). I've joined a Bible study with other moms that have young children and it has been such a breath of fresh air to hear what other moms are struggling with and to realize I'm not the only one going through the challenges of motherhood. And physically I am finally feeling 100% myself... I fully healed from surgery when lucy was about 5 months and I'm now back to my pre-pregnancy weight (give or take a few pounds... I'll blame on the extra milk I'm still carrying around).

No doctor appt. this month, so based on our home scale, Lucy is weighing in at 17.2lbs... finally double her birth weight!

There's something different about my smile...


Take a closer look and you'll see my first two teeth!


Being a dare-devil... like always...


Notice the tongue in all these pictures - she's been much more active with showing it since her first teeth came in...


Laid back...