7 month update--Josie

Apologies for the dearth of photos--esp of her actually looking at the camera. These were all taken on Nov. 3, the day she turned 7 months.

G'ma was feeding her prunes here. I cropped out g'ma with her mouth wide open to encourage Josie along.
At the beginning of Nov, she was still struggling a big with balance while sitting. Here she is straddling Ed's train set while reaching for her own toys. One thing has remained constant--she is often more interested in Eddie's toys than her own. He is catching on about how to address this issue.
Exhibit A, Josie is holding one of Eddie's trains. While all this was going on, Den and I were working like dogs. G'parents Ohio were too--in a different sort of way. They were probably cats, ducks, sheep, cows, and pigs too.

We've moved on from the baby tub, but now use the inflatable tub. It's a lot more forgiving to her noggin of the slip that occurs every so often. At this point, she was still slip sliding in the tub a bit.

No doctor visit at 7 months, but that doesn't mean we didn't see the doctor plenty. In short, J is having difficult adjusting to solids. I will spare more of the gorey deails except to say that much of Oct. we were awakened to Josephine screaming bloody murder only to pick her up and she'd let out a HUGE burp or continue to writhe in pain.

She'd often be on all fours rocking back and forth. This wasn't just at night, but most disruptive to our sleep then. Poor thing was bound up tighter than a rope. We tried all sorts of changes to her diet, to my diet. We tried giving her more food, less food, less meals in a day, no food in a day. Everything we could think of and nothing consistently did the trick. Last week we saw the doctor 2 times in a week.

She was (and is) spitting up several times/day whereas before she almost never spit up. She does seem to be doing better. Most recently doctor put her on a once/day dosage of milk of magnesia, to keep her regular. You know how they say parents talk about their kids poop a lot? Well, there is a reason for it--if your kid is having issues in this department it affects your life and theirs in profound ways. I've learned more about nutrition and what different foods can do to your body in the last 2.5 years than I had in the previous 30+.

Limiting myself to the month of October, Josie tried for the first time, pears, peas, oatmeal, sweet potatos, prunes, and I'm sure soemthing else I've left off.

In addition to waking because of discomfort, she was still in the phase of just plain waking. So, it was rare the whole month that she would make it from her bedtime of 6:45pm till midnight without waking at least 2-3 and sometimes 4 times. It would gradually ramp up. The first time, a pacificer would put her back to sleep. The second time, we'd try patting her back of diapered bottom, but usually have to pick her up and she'd fall back to sleep. The 3/4 time we almost always had to feed her water. Then she would wake at midnight or so and need to be fed (at this age, it is not uncommon for a baby to wake 4-6 hours after their last feeding to be fed again). Waking up all the other times is just plain annoying.

She would then wake sometime in the 2-3 am range (this was usually my turn) and again in the 5am range. Often she'd sleep till almost 8--too bad Eddie would wake at 6:30 or 7. Come to think of it, maybe this is why I haven't posted consistently. I'm so freakin' tired by the time Eddie was in bed, neither Den nor I could see straight.

Someday soon we're going to have to get her to fall asleep on her own. She did fall asleep in front of a football game a couple weeks back. That is one major difference--Eddie couldn't be less interested in TV, but Josie will get sucked into ANYTHING that is on. It will grad her attention--or in this case, lull her to sleep. Den and I were in the kitchen for a couple minutes and when I went to check on her, she was out cold.

She started pulling on the mobile about mid-month. Good indcator that it's time to move the mobile. This would be while she was laying on her stomach! She also started to outgrow size 3-6 month clothes--that sure didn't last long! She was trying the later half of the month to get herself to a seated position and finally did on Nov. 1--mind you I only witnessed this myself today--she would get almost there and then peter out. She also started really chattering--dada, mama, etc. All different sets of letters--whatever are age appropriate. [it did dawn on me that I need to work with her more these days on developing the age appropriate skills--with Eddie I was practically following a chart. With Josie, I basically do whatever Eddie is doing--and I'm sure she's learning a lot that way].

By the end of the month, her nap schedule was starting to evolve and solidify into consistent chunks. Usually around 9:30am, then sometime between 11:30 and 1 again and then again around 4:30 or 5.

Like Eddie, Josie is a laid back baby. She does not like it when I leave her alone. If someone else is there, she is fine, but if I plop her somewhere safe and dash off, she sometimes gets a little bent out of shape. Eddie cracks her up in the most basic ways. Just watching him laugh makes her laugh. He usually does really well with her. He has started to want to taste all of her foods.

I'm having a hard time not talking about what is going on NOW in their lives, so best to move on to that post...