After a couple of particularly rough parenting days (mainly involving sleep, but also separation anxiety), I'm having a blissful one! I thought I'd check in and put a few words together since I'm sitting here in my clean living room, cat pans clean, laundry in the dryer, while my baby naps by herself. I love, love, love napping with her, but I do enjoy the occasions where I can slip away and she stays asleep for a while (currently an hour!). It's her first Halloween, and first holidays always make me a bit sentimental since it's her last first of said holiday. Yes, it's her first Halloween but it's also her last first Halloween! Feliciy is wearing a precious outfit given to her by her Gammy that says my first halloween and has a little tutu on the pants. Then, this evening when we give out candy, she has a little outfit with a big cat face on it that she'll wear. It's regular clothes, but as close to a costume as I wanted to deal with when she's too little to want to put up with the real thing. Depending on how chilly it gets, I'd like to sit outside as a family tonight and hand out candy. Steven and I carved our pumpkin last night after Felicity went to bed. We almost skipped this year; time just got away from us! But around 9pm (which is usually when we do an hour of "together time" anyway), I got emotional that how could we have carved pumpkins the last 3 years and not on Felicity's first Halloween!? So to the table we went for, as tradition holds, me to scrape/de-seed and Steven to carve. We didn't end up roasting pumpkin seeds this year because there was some green and water inside of our pumpkin (blech) so I wasn't sure if they were ok to eat. And Steven skipped his traditional (and impressive) Marvel carvings and did an old fashioned jackolantern face. It was fun!
Back to my day. It's been a simple day, and so nice. In fact, both yesterday and today were great! Yesterday we went on a 2 hour play date with about 5 other moms at the play area of a local mall. It's made for crawlers/walkers, so it was perfect. The company was nice, Felicity napped on the way there and way home, and she had a blast. When we got home, she slept a bit more (!), and then we went on a walk with our neighbor. We walk probably 4-5 days a week, and I love it because it's exercise + company + time outside for my outdoor loving girl. When we got back, we ran and got traditional Halloween Krispy Kreme. Then the same neighbor dropped her 2 boys off (almost 3 and almost 1) so her and her hubby could go to dinner. You'd think going from 1 to 3 kids would be hard, and sometimes it is, but yesterday for about 45 minutes they all 3 played happily and I SAT ON THE COUCH. Since Felicity has been so clingy lately, I'm either on the floor with her, or on the couch with her whining/crying at my feet. So to just do my own thing while they all 3 played was amazing! And Felicity slept great because her friends wore her out.
Today we started the day with our neighbor walk, then leisurely got ready, Felicity had a nap and I had coffee, and then ran to Target after lunch. We played a bit when we got back and now she's napping again. Technically this is her 3rd nap, as she was up at 5:30 am (cries) and we napped together in the best cuddle ever from 7:30-8:30 before our walk. I've gotten a lot done around the house, which is really not that easy for me most days, and the breeze of the windows open is glorious.
Tomorrow may be rough, she may cry a lot, I may get nothing done.... but today... today I am living up the simple life :).
Wow, month 7 went WAY faster than month 6! And I'm a day late because we were out of town visiting my family :).
Weight: Up 2 lbs from last month, which is funny since I thought the other day that she didn't look as pudgy! She's right at 19 lbs.
Height: Not even trying to measure her lol. We'll find out at her 9 month check.
Medical issues: Felicity keeps getting diaper rashes :(. We just can't kick them for good. I also can't figure out if it's cloth related, like a sensitivity to synthetics or something. We keep going back and forth between cloth and sposies and trying various creams. Her hemanigoma is probably 40% skin colored now! Oh, she also threw up for the first time :(. She was sick on 9/21 and seemed to just have a 24 hour bug. When she fell asleep on me at church, just laying on my shoulder, I knew we were in trouble. She developed a fever and then later puked in the high chair (thankfully over the kitchen floor!). But luckily Felicity woke up totally normal the next day.
Sleep: Pretty much the same as last month. Up a few times between her bed time and ours, and then nurses on and off for a big portion of the night. She usually takes one bottle in the middle of the night, and every once in a while she wakes up wanting to play, so we have Steven watch her while he's getting ready for work and then Felicity will get back in bed with me until 7/7:30. Honestly, it's all less stressful than it was last month because it's our new norm. Ironically, she napped on her own in the crib on 9/22 but that was the end of that lol. We don't mind her being in our room, but the cosleeper is quickly being outgrown, and I don't find the pack and play comfy enough that I want her in it every night. But I also don't want to disassemble the crib to set it up in our room (sidecar or otherwise) so.... we're still figuring out what we want to do! So far she's fine in the cosleeper and bed with us, still.
Clothes/Diaper Size: Felicity is in 9 month clothing, with not a lot of room to grow! This is so weird for me because shes's always spent quite a few months in each size of clothing. I think she's going to grow out of the 9 month stuff the quickest!
Likes: Baby rice cakes, cheeseburger rice casserole, Little People, a whisk, a wooden animal puzzle, playing clapping games, watching babies, being outside.
Dislikes: diaper changes, when I walk away from her if she's feeling needy... that's about it! She has strong feelings, but is generally pretty happy.
Nicknames: Tickle, Stinka, Baby Girl....various others
Milestones: Felicity crawled the first time (one "step") on 9/20 but then didn't repeat it going forward until this past weekend. She has been crawling/scooting backward this past month and gets herself backed into corners, and becomes very angry! On the week of 9/22 she started giving me hugs, and on 9/27 she danced to music for the first time on her own. On 10/2 she initiated a game of "pea-pie" (peekaboo) which was the CUTEST THING EVER and we have video of. She also signed "nursie" a few times that day, although she hasn't done it since. The week of 10/6 we noticed at meal time that she had developed the pincer grasp. Felicity has started holding her own bottle if she's laying kind of propped on a pillow. I don't like it... I want to hold my baby!, but she has other plans and will eat way less if I try to hold and feed her. On 10/19 she SAID HER FIRST WORD while we were GONE! My parents were watching her and she started saying "Dada". Now she says it constantly and it's more cute than 2 people can handle.
I don't want to forget this:
We've done a lot of blanket time outside as a family, and it's so sweet! We put a big duvet out, bring out books for us, and toys for Felicity. We've spent as much as an hour and a half just enjoying time together in the beautiful fall weather. Felicity tries to eat weeds, grass, and leaves, but it's so much fun :).
We went consignment sale shopping (aren't we always?), and we found Felicity a little grow with me kitchen. It is so cute to see her play with! It's the perfect height for her to stand up (with our help) and play at, and then it grows another level for when she gets taller.
I took Felicity to see Steven at work for the first time. His store is 30 minutes away so it just generally doesn't make sense to go to, but we were dropping something off for a friend nearby so I drove over to do our shopping. Felicity looked very confused as to why she was seeing Daddy at this place! Cute girl.
