Happy Holidays!

We had a great first Christmas with Emily! We drove to Minnesota on Thursday the 22nd (Emily's 9 month birthday) and stayed at Great Grandpa Paul's house along with Nana Ellen and Grandpa Lee for three nights and then went and stayed at with the Comer's after that (Grandpa Joe, Mary, Aunt Julia and Aunt Rachel).
Emily did really well on the 4+ hour car ride even though she still only sleeps for 30 minute naps while in the car. She adjusted to her new surroundings pretty quickly, only waking up a few times at night, but not needing to be picked up or anything. She was around so many family members and did a great job being around people she didn't know and staying happy. Being around all those people gave her a chance to improve her mimicking skills which she is getting very good at.

She also loved spending time in some houses that had more room for her to crawl around and explore. She is so curious about everything that is going on around her and wants to watch what everyone is doing. She has really perfected her crawling and is great at standing up while holding on to something. In addition, she is getting better at transitioning between crawling and sitting and vice versa. She did miss her gym/jumper station while traveling though and has been bouncing a bunch since we have been home. We did have to cut our visit short unfortunately. On Monday the 26th Emily woke up with a big rash on her torso, arms, and thighs. We think it was hives that she got in reaction to something she came in contact with, but aren't sure what exactly caused it. We left on Monday just because we were concerned about what was going on with her and wanted to be at home. By Wednesday it was pretty much gone.
On Wednesday she had her 9 month well baby visit and weighed in at 23 pounds 5 ounces (99%) and 23.5 inches (96%)! So she is a big girl for her age, but at least proportional, so no concerns. Everything else looked great at the doctor's office, she is developing fine. Still no teeth. Almost going to start wearing the 18 month size clothes we got for Christmas! Working on taking more and more solids to start weaning off the formula and even though she's had a sippy cup for a couple months, she is finally drinking from it regularly.

We're In The Army - Nine Months

We are happy to report that Emily has been crawling for the past couple of weeks. It looks more like an Army crawl with one or both legs dragging behind her but she's getting the hang of it. She's also responding to our prompts with babbling or loud but happy screams. Our updates include:

• Eating food three times per day at 7am, 11am, and 5pm supplemented by formula after each feeding. She hasn't eaten a food she hasn't liked yet. We've added rice rusks and yogurt bites to her diet and she does well with them even though she doesn't have any teeth yet.
• A couple weeks ago she dropped her evening nap and now sleeps for about an hour in the morning and two in the afternoon on a good day.
• She can get wherever she wants to be including the stack of books on the bottom shelf of one of our end tables. Her "crawling" makes for a very dirty belly no matter how many times we clean the floor.

•  Her vocalizations are becoming more varied and loud. She makes noise to mimic us, when she's happy, and to get our attention.
• She's still a very happy baby who loves to sleep at night. She's usually asleep by 7pm and wakes up between 6-7am.
• She enjoys daddy's goofy dancing partially because she doesn't realize how bad it really is.
• Baths are fun for her no matter what her mood is. She loves to splash and play with her rubber ducky when she doesn't have it in her mouth.
• We're excited for some new toys at Christmas because she needs more and more stimulation these days and can get bored and whines more easily than she used to. Her new favorite toy is a plastic key chain with keys and a fob that plays car sounds. She loves to put it in her mouth and push the horn sound button over and over and over and...
• The Hicks' came to visit for Thanksgiving and provided Emily with a new audience. She appreciated their willingness to travel all the way to Iowa to celebrate the holiday and her dad's birthday. She even got a onesie from her Granana Mae with her photo on it.

• We head to Minnesota for the Christmas holiday tomorrow and have her nine month appointment when we get back to Cedar Rapids. We're excited to see how much she has grown and developed. As with many of us during this time of year, her pants (12 month size) are growing tighter every day.

8 Months Old!

Emily is 8 months old today and we can't believe how fast the time has gone! She has grown so fast and is amazing us each day! She's so amazing a malt shop we went to last weekend in Minnesota has already created "Emily's Favorite Malt" which includes hot fudge and butterscotch, Yum!! We continue to tell each other how lucky we are to have such a happy baby!

• Emily weighs 21.2 pounds and is 28.5 inches long. Wearing size 12 month pants and size 9 month tops.
• She is getting very close to crawling. She gets up on her legs and rocks back and forth, and goes backwards, but hasn't figure out how to move her hands at the same time as her legs to go forwards. She has good wrestling potential!
• She eats fruits or veggies at lunch time and dinner, and continues to have 4 bottles per day. Still working on getting her used to the sippy cup.
• She continues to sleep from about 7pm until about 6:30am (except when she has a stuffy nose like this past weekend). She naps for about an hour in the morning and a little longer in the afternoon. She is starting to drop her evening cat nap that is sometimes around 20-30 minutes at about 5pm, sometimes she doesn't take it at all if her earlier naps were longer.
• Continues to suck her thumb when tired and when going to sleep. Hasn't really used a pacifier for several months. She got another cold this week, which made it really hard to suck her thumb since her nose was so stuffed up, which she did not like at all.
• More and more vocal with lots of babbling sounds of bababa, dadada, gagaga, and hmmmmm, eeeeee. Meanwhile, Daddy has progressed to words with two syllables and contractions.
• Loves to read books, bounce in her baby einstein gym, bang toys on the high chair, and play peek-a-boo. She's very ticklish and loves when Daddy kisses her neck.
• Daycare continues to go well, she really likes playing with the other kids and rolling/scooting around on the floor when they are upstairs.

Emily continues to have lots of visitors and to do so great going from person to person. A couple weeks ago Aunt Julia came to visit and Emily was so good for her and let her help with lunch, bath, and diaper time! Then last weekend Megan had some work meetings in Minneapolis on Friday so Tom and Emily came along to hang out at Grandpa Joe and Mary's house. Aunt Rachel came over to visit each day we were there and Emily had a great time playing with all the fun toys at their house! We stopped by to visit Great Grandpa Paul who was so surprised to see how mobile Emily is! Then this weekend for Thanksgiving Tom's family is all coming to visit, including Great Granny Mae! We are excited to host our first Thankgiving Dinner!

Rolls everywhere!

Emily loves bath time and really enjoys splashing in the water even though she gets it in her eyes and mouth. She just startles herself when that happens, looks up at us to make sure everything is ok, smiles, and then goes back to splashing! Here are some fun photos of her after bathtime last night that show her many cute rolls!
The other rolling that we are referring to is Emily's ability to roll to get where ever she wants to go. She has been rolling for awhile, but this new rolling encompasses pivoting, turning her body 90 or 180 degrees around, and analyzing the angle she needs to be at to roll all the way to get something or to avoid obstacles in her way. She isn't crawling yet because I think this rolling technique is enough for her now. She does use her arms to move sometimes but just ends up going backward, which frustrates her.

She is also much more vocal in just the last week or two. She still does her sing-song "ahhhhhhh, eeeeeee" in a very high pitch. And the "hhmmmmmm" a lot. But she has added babababababa and even some d sounds sometimes.

Emily has also added eating solid food at dinner time and opens her mouth for more without any of the coaxing that we did for the first few weeks of solid foods.

It has gotten cold here, so we pulled out the size 12 month winter jacket we got for her. Unfortunately it looked really cute in the store, but until we put it on her we forgot to take into consideration the puffy factor! She barely fits in the car seat with it on!

Happy Halloween and 7 months old!

Emily turned 7 months old a week ago, we can't believe how fast this has gone and how big she is (and how little time we have for this blog)! She barely resembles the 6 pound infant we met at the hospital!

At 7 months old Emily is:

• 28 inches long and 20 pounds 9 ounces. Which means we have transitioned to the convertible car seat instead of the infant carrier seat because she is getting so long!
• Wearing some 12 month size clothes (some pants and sleeper pajamas and jacket) and some 9 month size clothes still (shirts and some pants). Wearing size 3 diapers during the day and size 4 overnight diapers at night.
  
• Sitting up on her own and reaching for toys, but not crawling yet. She really likes sitting on her blanket in the living room or sitting in her high chair watching us cook or do stuff around the house.
  
• She still eats 4 bottles a day of 9 ounces each and is having baby food once a day at noon. She has had a variety of fruits and veggies and is just starting in the last week or so to act more interested in the food and taking more than a couple ounces. So we will probably start giving her some food around 5pm as well this week.
• Still takes 3 naps a day for about 90 minutes in the morning and in the afternoon and then about 20-30 minutes around 5pm. Goes to bed between 6:30 and 7:00 and wakes up about 12 hours later.
• She is vocalizing more and more, making a variety of sounds kind of like she is singing, often high pitched. She love to laugh and be tickled and play peek-a-boo.
  
• We continue to be so amazed at how happy she is and how little she cries. She really only gets fussy if she is tired and getting fussy for her means whining and wanting to be held while walking around looking at things. She almost never has a real melt down.
  
• She puts EVERYTHING in her mouth and her favorite part of all her toys to put in the mouth is the tag. Even the small blanket she has that has these ribbon tags all over it, she will find the white store tag to suck on the most.
  
• She is drooling a lot and gumming her teething rings a lot, we can't feel or see teeth yet, but think they are coming soon.
  

Last weekend we went on a road trip to Milwaukee for Megan Olson's (Megan's college roommate) wedding. Emily got to stay in a hotel for the first time and did great despite only sleeping for two 30 minute naps in the car ride. She came to the wedding for about 30 minutes and then went back to the hotel to play with Aunt Julia and her boyfriend Tyler, who had come to babysit from Madison.
Last night we went to hang out with our new friends Peter and Annaliese and their daughter Caroline who is 13 months old. Emily sure likes watching Caroline play and we are excited to be meeting more friends who have kids and are more understanding of what we are going through (aka having to leave by 7pm to make bed-time!).

We are going to the trick-or-treat event in the Coe Residence Halls later today and she will wear her costume to daycare tomorrow, so we will post more pictures of that later this week.

Happy Fall!

We've had some beautiful warm fall weather this week and had a fun visit with Aunt Julia on Saturday and Sunday. We took a walk and checked out the Coe Football game on Saturday. Emily sure looks great in her sunglasses and doesn't mind them at all!


On Sunday, we went to the apple orchard to get some pumpkins and apples and had to try out Emily's Halloween Costume! Even though it was warm out, she did great!Now time to go make some peach baby food for Emily to try. She's had cereal, pears, sweet potato, and still isn't all that interested so today we will try peaches!

Bouncing, Noses and Pears, Oh My!

In the last two weeks Emily has had lots of family time! After her 6 month birthday we all went for a visit to see the Comer family in Minnesota. This was our first long car trip since our 4th of July vacation and Emily was not as interested in sleeping in the car as she was at that age. She did fine despite having less nap time than usual which really impressed us, and she continued to sleep through the night in the unfamiliar environment and new crib. Good job!

Emily had so much fun with all the new toys that Mary had for her! She did especially well showing off all her rolling and smiling skills for all the family and guests that came over to meet her. She enjoyed checking out Grandpa Joe's mustache and like pulling on Aunt Rachel's long hair! She tried to make friends with doggie Bruce, but he just couldn't contain his excitement over trying to figure out what that wiggling, noisy thing was that we all were holding!

Then two days after we returned home to Iowa Nana Ellen and Grandpa Lee arrived for a visit and brought with them the car that we bought from them (subaru outback) since our Mazda was totaled in the accident at the beginning on September. Emily liked staying home from daycare to hang out with them, but unfortunately got another cold which she gave to everyone else, especially Nana and Mommy who got it really bad! But despite having a cold, Emily still is a trooper and wasn't fussy, just sometimes had trouble breathing through her nose which would wake her up from naps. She does great with the nose syringe though, and it seems to provide her much needed relief. She loved reading books, singing songs, and going on walks with Nana and Grandpa.
Emily had her first food while Nana and Grandpa Lee were in town. Started with rice cereal which she wasn't interested in. Then added bananas to the rice cereal which she was somewhat more interested in, but not really. And is now on to pears, which she doesn't mind, but she still doesn't really get the concept of opening her mouth to put the spoon in!

At her 6 month well visit we found out Emily is 19 pounds 5 ounces and is 27 inches long. She got a few more shots, including a flu shot, but did great.

We all three stayed home sick on Monday and are still battling this dumb cold. Here's hoping we get better soon before Aunt Julia comes to visit this weekend!

Half way to her first birthday!

Emily is 6 months old today! So we started the day with trying to get her photo taken with the birthday sign that we make each month. Emily was not so interested in looking at the camera or at smiling at us no matter how many silly noises we made! Rather than continue to torture her, we thought this collage of not perfect photos was a perfect way to show that she is developing her own personality and is much more interested in the things around her than doing what we tell her to do!

At 6 months old Emily is:

• Sleeping from about 7pm until about 7am. Very rarely waking up in the night. (except for those few days in a row a couple weeks ago when she was rolling over in her crib at night).
  
• Eating 4 times per day at 7am, 11am, 3pm and 7pm. 8 or sometimes 9 ounces per bottle.
• Almost 19 pounds! (more specifics at her 6 month check-up next Thursday).
  
• Wearing size 3 diapers and size 9 month clothes, but close to needing size 12 month pants.
• Has very light soft blond hair that is still pretty short.
  
• Takes three naps per day, around 9am and 1pm for around 90 minutes each and then a short 30-45 minute nap at 5pm.
  
• Rolling over like a champ and pushing up with her arms when she is on her tummy, but not really going anywhere.
  
• Reaching for toys and switching toys from one hand to the other and choosing one toy over another.
  
• Loves playing peek-a-boo, playing in her bouncy activity station, listening to singing, and reading books and playing with toys that make noise when she shakes them.
  
• Can sometimes get a little fussy around 6pm since it is close to bedtime, but will stop if we take her outside for a walk in the carrier. But other than that, she rarely cries or fusses unless you are too slow getting her the bottle during the day.
  
• Continues to kick her legs a lot (any suggestions on how to keep baby socks on would be appreciated!)
• Is a very happy baby and loves to giggle! Her favorite is being tickled/blowing raspberries on her neck and stomach, or sticking your tongue out at her.
  

Busy Busy Busy...

Wow! It's been a long time since our last post. I guess that's what happens when the school year starts and the students are all back on campus!

Emily has mastered rolling over from front to back and back to front. She went through a period where she would roll over to her stomach in her crib at night and not be able to get back to her back and would get mad about it. We would roll her back for her if she cried, but a few times she fell asleep like that. Now that it is colder outside, we have her sleeping in a baby sleeping bag of sorts that has holes for her head and arms, but keeps her legs zipped up in the big pouch. Since sleeping in that she hasn't been rolling over and waking up in the night which makes us all happy. She also uses that at naps instead of the swaddle, so I think we figured out an easy way to stop swaddling!

I was in a car accident on the 8th and thank goodness Emily wasn't with me. I am fine, but the car is not, it was declared a total loss and so we will be getting another new vehicle soon. While driving on a 4 lane highway a guy was turning from a side street and pulled out right into the side of the car, claiming to not see me at all. Sure was scary and has made me even more cautious on the road.

Emily got her first cold last week and then passed it on to both Mommy and Daddy in various forms of sore throat, stuffy nose, and exhaustion. We took her to the pediatrician just to be sure it was just a cold and learned that she is up to 18 pounds 9 ounces! With the colder weather we have put her in some of the pants outfits we bought quite a while ago and a few of the 9 month size pants are already getting tight on her! She continues to eat 4 bottles a day of 8 ounces of formula. She will start on rice cereal right after her 6 month birthday when we get back from a quick visit to Minnesota. She continues to do great at daycare and loves watching the other kids at Sue's house as they play.

Emily wearing some sweaters knitted by Nana Ellen!

5 months down...

Emily will reach five months of age tomorrow and both her and we are getting the hang of this baby thing. In the past two weeks we tried some different schedules because she was showing signs that she didn't want to be woken up for her last feeding. We have recently determined that she only wants four feedings per day and sleeps better if she is in bed by 7:30pm. This means her feedings are every four hours starting at 7am. At least that's what we think. For now. Until tomorrow. Or tonight. Of course, once we made this change we looked back on it and said to ourselves, "duh, it makes total sense now".

 A few other items of note:

• She's now wearing size 3 diapers. They look big on her but the size 2 diapers were noticeably small. We think the larger diaper is helping with her sleeping as well. She's also just transitioned into the 6-9 month sized clothes.
• She is loving daycare. Her "friends" yell her name and run up to her when she gets dropped off every morning. We've noticed some odd whining occasionally on the weekends and think it is because we aren't nearly as entertaining as her daycare pals. We also think she picked up her high-pitched vocalization by listening to and imitating those same pals. Sue (the daycare lady) has taken the kids to the playground and splash pad recently and reports that Emily loves watching them run around.
• Thumb-sucking has begun. A few times at night we have woken up to Emily sucking her thumb while sleeping.  She doesn't do it very often during the day yet but seems to if she is getting ready for a nap.
• Giggles McGee is still making us laugh too. Our tickles and peek-a-boo attempts get regular belly laughs from Emily that often result in her getting the hiccups.
• She's trying to roll over. She has done it all the way by herself twice.  She can get on her side but doesn't know how to tuck her bottom arm to complete the roll. Any. Day. Now.
• While it's tempting to try now, we are planning on waiting one more month before we try to give her any baby food.
• She is up to 18 pounds according to our bathroom scale!  Which means she has so many cute baby rolls!  We are still finding hidden areas on her body where gunk builds up. We found a roll under her chin that was collecting wayward formula and some crustiness behind her ears. Both were easily cleaned up and the small rash under her chin cleared up within two days.  But Mom and Dad are learning that bathtime is a bit more work than before!