7 Months and One Week

I love blowing raspberries

I decided to give Etta a running start on 7 months before I blogged about her. So 7 months and one week seems like a fair point to stand back and evaluate.

Still don't like baths. Still don't get them very often.

You are the smiling-est, happiest baby. I thought your sister was happy, but you take the cake.

Love playing with my rings, just like my sister did!
You have discovered the joy that is raspberries and you will happily do them over and over. This afternoon, your sister and you were having a back and forth raspberries contest in the car. If someone starts doing raspberries, you mimic them immediately!

You also love peek-a-boo. You just laugh and laugh when I cover your face with something and say, "Where's Etta?" then pull it off and say, "There she is!"

Goofing off with your favorite person

Two days after you turned 7 months you chose between two books! I put "Good Night Moon" and "Pat Them Gently" in front of you and told to choose one. You examined both and then decisively grabbed "Good Night Moon"! Now every time we read before nap or bedtime, I let you choose the book.

The last month has been really difficult as far as sleep goes. We sleep-trained you and you are much better for naps, although you still go down for pretty short periods of time, but you have gone from sleeping 7.5-9 hours at a stretch to sleeping 4. If I'm lucky. It's been hard, you slept through the night almost from the get-go, so going back to such extreme sleep-deprivation has been hard on your momma! This weekend you did 8 hours two nights in a row, so I'm hopeful that perhaps we're on our way back to longer stretches of sleep.

You eat 3 meals a day and often demand more, more MORE!

You suffered through your first Slapdash. MeMe stayed with you and Stella, and on the Sunday after it was all over, you wouldn't let me out of your sight. In fact, you wouldn't let me put you down, even to give you to Daddy. You are truly a Momma's girl.

You went on your first family vacation, to Galveston! You weren't too fond of all the time spent in the car, or all the missed naps, but I still think you had your own brand of a good time. At Schlitterbahn, you were all suited up in your life jacket and sharing the intertube with your Daddy and you totally passed out as we floated on the Torrent River. Everyone in the park thought you were adorable. Bathing Beauty
While on vacation, you also had a couple of complete meltdowns in the car on the way back from dinner. Your Daddy, your sister and I sang Old McDonald with increasingly silly animals and objects and you calmed down immediately. That is still your favorite song.

You started sitting in real high chairs at restaurants and sitting in the shopping cart at the grocery store.
You drink out of a sippy cup, although you usually need Mama to hold it so you can actually get water out.
You took your first bus ride
You slid down the slide in the backyard for the first time.

Sometimes I feel guilty because the number of photos I take of you pales in comparison to the ones I took of your sister. And I don't blog about you nearly as much, or in as timely as a fashion, as I did with your sister. And sometimes you get dragged around rather than having your naps exactly when they are supposed to happen. But I enjoy you so much, Etta. I really feel like you've made our family complete. We're now a self-sustaining, contained unit. And I hope that in exchange for not having a moment by moment photographic record of your life, you are getting better parents (because we're more experienced and much more relaxed), and a sister who adores you and keeps you constantly entertained.

And finally, because it's just too much of a coincidence that I took pictures of you and your sister in the same outfit at almost exactly the same age:

Here you are,And here's Stella:

I love you sweetie, till' next month!

6 months!

Her first Starbucks. Very important milestone.

Etta turned 6 months old Sunday. I just cannot believe that my little baby is already halfway through her first year of life! We've been in hardcore sleep training mode and (knock on wood), I'm starting to believe it's working. It's hard when she's screaming and crying, but we'd been setting her up with bad habit after bad habit. And not scheduling around her naps. Last week the you-know-what hit the fan and she would not sleep. Woke up at her grandparent's Thursday night and wouldn't go back to sleep, so they got her up. Then woke up at our house at 1:50am and wouldn't go back to sleep for 2 hours. Eek! So we stiffened our spine, made some sacrifices (like Tim and Etta missing a birthday party that Stella and I went to Saturday afternoon to not sabotage nap), and got her back to human baby form. Most days, we only suffer through less than 10 minutes of crying before she falls asleep. But she still cries as she senses that we're starting her nap/bedtime routine and every time it breaks my heart and I say, "it's not going to work!" Tim is always like, "why don't you give it a few minutes, you say this every night!" I'm glad he's right;) Triple-decker of cuteness

So Etta is now back on the cereal (rice) and has started eating sweet potatoes. She really digs the food now. We went to the doc Monday and she is 26 inches long (50-75%), 13 lbs (25-50%) and 43 cm head circumference (50-75%). For comparison (and of course I have to compare), at 6 months Stella was 26.25 inches long (75%), 16lbs, 9.6oz (just below 75%) and 42 cm head circumference (25-50%). So Stella was 3 lbs, 9.6 oz heavier (WOW), but they're about the same on height. I blogged on the occasion of Stella's 6 month visit too. Apparently then I was also worried about squeezing in 3 feedings. That seems so silly in retrospect. What did I have to do back then? Ah, I was so naive! With Stella the doc, (same doc, btw), was all about cutting down on feedings. No mention of this that time. I guess that's the difference between having a big baby and an average/slightly below average one! I'm enjoying doing everything again this time, but having it be totally different.

Etta continues to be a super happy, smiley baby. She's now moved into the terminally cute blowing bubbles and making really cute gurgling sounds phase. I think teeth may be imminent, as she puts her tongue over her bottom teeth a lot and also is drooling constantly. Plus her gums are swollen. But who knows, Stella didn't have teeth until she was 8 months old!

We'll be going on our first family vacation two weeks from tomorrow. And this weekend my Mom will be coming and watching the girls while Tim and I do Slapdash Flimflammery 6 Hopefully all those changes won't sabotage our sleep training and turn Etta back into a zombie. I did not like zombie baby!
Well, Stella's timer woke up Etta, but not Stella, so I guess I'm back on duty again!

Family Photos

We did family photos a couple of weeks ago and they turned out AMAZING! You probably will only be able to see these for a bit longer, but check out some of them at:

http://www.robinwinklesphotography.com/Favorites/thomas.htm
and
http://www.robinwinklesphotography.com/blog/?p=1985

Etta's got a brand new trick

Etta's been saying "mama" for the past week or two. The first time I heard it, I was shocked because Dada is the easier sound to make and Stella made that sound for months before she said Mama. But Etta is a bit of a Mama's girl;) I knew she was just making a sound and I wasn't naive enough to believe that she knew I was Mama. Until today.

This afternoon I was trying to get Etta to take a nap and she was wailing and was in full-on crawl position in her crib. She looked up at me with those big brown eyes and yelled, "Mama! Maaaammmmaaaaa!" Dude, no mistaking that girl knew what she was doing. She was tugging at my heartstrings. Hard. I am in trouble with this one, she knows how to play me!

5 Months

Etta turned 5 months old yesterday. It is nearly impossible to believe that my tiny newborn has been replaced by this little creature that interacts with us.

In the past month, Etta has:
-started giggling, although it's really hard to predict what will make her guffaw. It is the cutest sound ever, though.
-started motoring using her feet and knees and sort of sliding along on her face.
-started playing with toys. She goes after a toy and really enjoys her rings and other little toys we give her. -she's also started sitting in her exersaucer. She REALLY enjoys it now. When we first tried it a month ago she was not into it.

-found her feet and added them as another "toy".
-started enjoying and lapping up her cereal! This is a very recent development. For the first few weeks, she was not into the food at all. Then last Tuesday, she started eating the cereal with gusto, but she'd spit it back up (the "I don't know what to do with this yet, but I sure want more of it!" syndrome). Yesterday she attacked that bowl like she'd never eaten before and cried when there wasn't anymore. AND most of it stayed in her mouth. This is very exciting.
-started grabbing our plates when we try to eat. Yesterday she picked up fistfuls of greens from my salad, and tonight she shoved her hand into Tim's refried beans. Dining just got a lot more interesting!
-her hair has really thickened up and grown in. Stella described the color of it best as "grey", although I'd call it more silver. It's definitely very blond with some darker light brown (or silver) strands thrown in.

Etta is the most beautiful, happy infant, at least since Stella. She may be even more happy than Stella. She and her sister get closer every day. The look that Etta gives Stella is the closest thing to worship I've ever seen. I can't help but feel a little pang that my sweet tiny baby is growing up so fast, but I'm excited to see the little girl she'll grow into and to watch her and Stella develop their relationship as sisters.
Looking like twins at different ages.

Money to Burn

I was not aware of this, but apparently the City of Austin has money to burn. That's the only explanation I can think of for this:
This is a bag of crap that was left hanging from my front door and presumably the front doors of all my neighbors. The city paid some employee to walk around and deliver a CF bulb and a silly booklet full of "no duh" ways you can conserve energy. Did you know that you can buy energy star appliances that use less energy? And you can save $7 a year by using a CF bulb! Even if these were useful bits of info, they could have packaged the booklet in with our City of Austin bill and paid no additional postage. And they could have included a coupon for a free CF in the bills if they were so gung-ho about it. This is just a disgusting waste of money at a time when we are closing city pools and the libraries are each closed for 2 days a week.

McKenna Children's Museum

We went to the McKenna Children's Museum in New Braunfels Saturday. Stella had a great time:Etta, not so much:

I do NOT want to ride the horsey!
That's not fair, really. We put her on the horse just as she was starting to melt down to let us know she was hungry. We just wanted to snap her photo before I whisked her away to feed her. But it really cracks me up!

Etta's Peculiar way of Crawling

Stella's Quote of the Day

I was trying to remember this for yesterday's post, and luckily Tara has a better memory than me and remembered the story!
Yesterday morning, Stella was standing up on our bed, yelling "I'm the Party Pig!" and then crashing onto our bed (like she was jumping into a mosh pit circa 1993.) I was like, "what's a party pig?" and she said, "the store I went to with Baba to buy Daddy's balloons for his birthday". I have no clue how she was a store. I asked her what Party Pig's wear and she said, "nothing. I'm the naked Party Pig!" and then dove onto the bed once more. Then she said, "I'm the Party Pig soldier!" before diving again. Sometimes that child is so weird.

Cute Quote from Stella

I was trying to convince Stella to watch Sesame Street (rather than Curious George or Franklin, her favorites of late) and I said, "don't you miss Elmo and Big Bird and everyone?" And she said, "I don't miss them, Elmo and everyone misses me!" Then she decided to go ahead and watch it and she said, "So they won't miss me anymore!" Too cute!

Stella and Etta got the chance to model some more clothes Wednesday morning. Check them out. Make sure to scroll through to see all the pics (and all of Becka's adorable clothes). Pick up an outfit or bib while you're there!

Etta has started really motoring lately. She will use her foot or knee to push off and really is getting places. Guess it's time to start baby-proofing!