Aveline is Seven Months

Our baby turned seven months old this past Monday. To celebrate, we went to a doctor's appointment, and all we got out of it was a DTaP vaccination. No measurements. Just a shot. However, Avie did wonderfully in receiving that shot. She was lying on her back on the table, and I held her hands while the nurse practitioner, Susan, did the sticking in her left thigh. I had to actually look over at the syringe to make sure the fluid was gone, as there was really no other way to know. Avie did not make a peep. There will not be another doctor's appointment for Aveline until she turns nine months, and that will be a well baby visit, so I am sure there will be more to report then.

In the meantime, Mommy's report will have to suffice. Avie is learning to sit up unassisted, and is doing fairly well with it. As long as she is sitting up straight or leaning forward, she is totally fine. However, she still tends to topple backward or to the side if thrown off balance at all. She will get the hang of it soon enough. For now, I just sit close by and play "trust fall" with her. She is as grabby as ever, and loves to reach for and latch onto her toys... and then promptly put them in her mouth. Her favorite toys right now seem to be Sophie the Giraffe, the wooden stacking toy, her wooden teething ring, the Skwish toy, her Wiggly Giggler rattle, and, of course, the cell phone, which she is really not given the chance to play with, but she longs for from afar.

Avie went through about a week-long period where I would put her down to sleep on her back, and she would wake up on her tummy. But then that kind of stopped, and now over the past week, it seems I find her completely turned around. And she nearly always rolls over on her side now when I lay her down in the crib or the pack-n-play. Speaking of the pack-n-play, I still have not been brave enough to put them in the same room at night. However, with Elsa feeling fairly puny this last week with the chicken pox, she ended up putting herself into bed for a nap one afternoon, overlapping with Avie's normal naptime. So I went ahead and put Avie down in the crib after Elsa had fallen asleep in her bed, and that worked out perfectly, even with some noises coming from Avie. One of these nights... Right now she is taking a morning nap, an afternoon nap (both between one-and-a-half and two hours), and goes to bed for the night around 7:30 p.m. I think I might see light at the end of the tunnel, as recently she has only been getting up once during the night. The time seems to somewhat bounce around, but, regardless, getting up once is so much nicer. And then she sleeps until around 6:30 a.m. or 7:00 a.m. She loves taking either her blankey or a blanket that is over her in both hands, and pulls it up to her mouth to faux nurse as she falls asleep. Or she will just suck on her forearm.

Aveline continues to be a good eater -- she has tried enough pureed foods now that I cannot even really keep up. The "squeezy" type baby foods were not an option when Elsa was a baby (seems silly since it was not that long ago), but I love them. They really offer a great variety, with a lot of fruit/veggie/grain combinations, and my friend, Kate, is right -- there is just no way I could offer that much variety in making my own food. That said, I do have ingredients to make some lentils, etc., and now just need to get around to actually doing it. I let her try a teething biscuit for the first time this week, which she thoroughly enjoyed. And I need to try the little mesh hand-held feeder with her, in which I can put chunks of frozen fruit, etc. Now that she is sitting in the highchair, it will be easier to try more fingerfoods.

I feel like because it seems like time is flying by, I might not be introducing a lot of things to Avie that maybe I was overly anxious to do with Elsa. She just still seems like she should be a tiny little baby. Thus, it just occurred to me in the last week or two to go ahead and introduce a sippy cup with water. I bought her a new, cute Winnie-the-Pooh beginner cup, and she took right to it, nearly immediately picking it up and taking a sip! That was certainly not my experience with Elsa. And, again, maybe that is just because I tried earlier with her. Or maybe it is just Aveline's fabulous grabbing skills. Avie seems to either be on a bit of a nursing strike or is perhaps attempting to drop a couple of feedings. She seems the least interested with the two nursing sessions following her naps, which would be the most obvious to drop anyway. She became a more distracted nurser a month or two ago, but this more like flat-out refusal. I certainly am not going to force the issue. I just hope she does not decide to completely wean herself any time too soon.

She still has just the two bottom teeth, and I cannot tell that the top two are close to popping through, though she has been a bit fussy about something here over the past couple of days.

Avie rides in the car pretty well now. She still loves grabbing those cute little toes. The trill is still there, though does not come out quite as often. She still completely adores her big sister (boy, does Elsa get the best smiles and giggles). She is still a very happy baby. And we all still love her to pieces.

Teething biscuit in the big highchair at home for the first time