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!

Swaddle: 1 - Emily: 0

As we mentioned in our last post, Tom put Emily to bed without the swaddle on Thursday night while I was out of town. Emily did great, and pretty much slept through the night. Then Friday and Saturday nights she did ok, woke up a few times each night, but went back to sleep easy enough.

Sunday and Monday nights went downhill. She just kept waking up and had a hard time calming down. Both nights we ended up putting her back in the swaddle by around 2am just so we could get some sleep. We aren't giving up yet, but already decided that tonight the second time she wakes up we are putting the swaddle back on just so we can sleep. Hopefully she will get the hang of it soon. Part of the problem is that she is developing her skills of rolling over and has woken up the past two nights trying to roll over and gets stuck in the halfway rolled over position because she is not totally awake or aware of what she is doing!

Time to go get some more caffeine!

Peek-a-boo!

Emily sure loves to laugh! She loves being tickled and playing peek-a-boo with Daddy! (see the YouTube videos)  She has also started to roll over from back to tummy, getting all the way over by herself a couple times, and several more times with us helping with that one arm that gets stuck underneath her!

The other big milestone is that she has slept three nights now without being in the swaddle! Daddy tried it on Thursday while Mommy was out of town and she did perfectly.  The last couple weeks hadn't been great for her sleep wise at night, so we think she's been trying to tell us that she didn't want the swaddle anymore, we just weren't listening to her signs enough!  Then Friday and Saturday she only woke up a couple times but went right back to sleep as soon as we gave her the pacifier. She didn't used to use the pacifier very much at all, but seems to want it more at nap time and when she wakes up at night. But we'd rather have that and be done with the swaddle.  She continues to lose most of her long dark hair and has some fine blond hair coming in!



She has had a great few weeks since our last post, but we sure have been busy! She had a great week with Nana Ellen not this past week, but the week before. She also got to see Grandpa Lee for a couple days and he did a great job with his first bottle feeding! Nana bought Emily some great new books to read, a stuffed doll they named Lucy, and some more toys to suck on, which Emily loves! Emily had her 4 month check up at the beginning of Nana's visit and had some more shots, which made her really sleepy the next couple days while home with Nana. At her check-up (july 25) she weighed in at 15 pounds 12 oz and 25.25 inches! She is just about out of her 6 month clothes and will be starting 9 month sizes soon. We were so appreciative to have all the help from Nana! And the freezer is happy to be fully stocked with yummy dinners too!

On August 1st Emily started daycare at Sue's house (a in-home daycare that is a few blocks from our house). She was a little off with her naps the first day, but then after a few suggestions to Sue, she had a great rest of the week and seems to really love watching the other kids at story time, and singing. The only issue Sue had was that on the second day Emily pooped through her diaper onto her clothes, that's the first time she has ever done that, and we were glad it wasn't with us!! Mommy and Daddy are still getting used to being away from her all day. We are excited for when she is able to stay up at night a little later so we get more play time with her at night. It's hard to put her to bed at 6:45 when she is sleepy because we still want her to stay up so we can play with her!

4 months old!

Emily starts her 4th month in a huge heat wave, which means she hasn't been outside in a week, with not much relief in site! Yuck!

At 4 months Emily is:

• 15 pounds (4 month Doctor visit is next week, so we'll get more stats then)
  
• giggling and making lots of talking noises trying to join in the conversation
• still kicking her legs like crazy, but has now figured out that she only needs to kick one leg to make her favorite seat bounce up and down

• sucking on her fingers whenever she can
• losing more of her shiny brownish/red hair that she was born with, and it looks like the hair that will replace it is coming in blond
  
• grabbing her toys and bringing them all to her mouth
  
• taking longer naps during the day (usually around 1.5 hrs) and therefore only eating 5 times per day, 4 of them being formula (at least for another few weeks until mom completely transitions and then when the frozen breast milk is gone)
• still sleeping in the swaddle, but tends to get her arms out sometimes, so we think we will try and transition out of it in a few weeks

• continues to sleep through the night. If she wakes up usually a diaper change or a pacifier tends to put her back to sleep fairly easily.
• had two successful half days at daycare in preparation for starting full time at Sue's house August 1st. Mom and Dad were more nervous than Emily was...

We were all excited that Emily had more visits from grandparents and great grandparents this month (see photos below). She saw Great Grandpa Paul at the cottage over the 4th of July, Grandma and Grandpa Hicks and Great Grandma Mae came last weekend and Grandpa Lee and Nana Ellen are coming this weekend! Wish Nana Ellen good luck next week while she has Emily all by herself for the week while Mommy and Daddy go back to work full time!

Emily's first vacation!

Happy July! Emily went on her first vacation to her Great Grandpa Doege's cottage in northern Wisconsin. She is now the 6th generation to have visited the cottage (built by her Great Great Great Grandpa!!!)

What would have taken Mom and Dad 6.5 hours to drive took the three of us 9.5 hours! We stopped three times at parks along the way to feed Emily and let her stretch and play a bit before being put back in the car seat. Emily slept most of the time she was in the car. On the way up she only fussed a bit during the last hour and on the way home wasn't very interested in eating much, but still did fine in the seat and slept most of the way.We arrived Thursday evening before everyone else in order to get settled a bit (and everyone was right, we only used about half of the stuff that we packed). On Friday it was very hot and humid (which is quite rare that far in the north woods, so there is no air conditioning) so Emily spent the whole day in just a diaper. We found that putting a wet washcloth on her head helped her cool down! Daddy says she looks like George Washington! She got a bit fussy because of the heat once, and a few times had trouble getting her regular naps, but other than that she was her usual happy self! After the heat broke, we had two beautiful days! She had a great time playing with Nana Ellen and Grandpa Lee and loved smiling at her Great Grandpa! She spent some time hanging out down by the lake and even did a little "swimming!" She also got to chill out on the porch swing with Mom! Emily also got to meet new friends, Anna and Grant Johnson and told us she hopes they bring her a playmate in a couple years!
Also new this week, we have started giving Emily formula. We will gradually replace one nursing with formula for a few days and then a second, etc. Daddy gave her the bottle and she fussed a bit and made some funny faces to let us know she wasn't too sure about this new taste, but eventually got used to it and took the whole bottle. She also continues to do great at sleeping through the night and most of the time sleeps from around 9pm until 6am. And she really seems to have found her voice lately and is babbling lots more.