ada charlotte {7 months}

My Sweet Girl,

Time is flying too fast! It's a weird thing, parenthood. I finally understand what people mean when they say they want to bottle up moments and save them for later. All of your huge smiles, all of your cute noises, every position you sleep in -- I just want to save them forever! Pictures sort of capture it, but I know there will be days in the future when I just want to re-live all these special moments, and I won't be able to.

I find myself getting excited for every new thing you learn, but with that comes sadness about leaving the old things behind. I miss the excitement I felt a few months ago when you were a new expert at holding your head up during tummy time! I miss hearing your sleepy noises and watching you sleep in the cradle in our room. I miss burping you in the middle of the night, because that's when you were always the most cuddly! It's this weird bittersweetness that I just don't know what to do with! I want to be super present in every moment because I know it's the only time I get that moment, but I don't know how to do it! Like, how do I really soak up every ounce of every moment?

Just know that I love you so much, baby girl. I love being your mama. Every month I waited for you, every month I carried you inside me, every month I endured short naps -- it's all worth it, because you are the most beautiful and wonderful thing to ever happen to me and Daddy :)

Stats

You weigh 16 pounds even (35%) and are 26 7/8 inches long (65%). It seems like you're finally completely evened out, because those percentiles are pretty much the same as last month!
You are STILL wearing 0-3 month clothes a majority of the time. You've outgrown a few things, and I'm having to roll up pants to make them capris or shorts instead of high-waters, but things mostly still fit. You are also wearing most of your 3-6 month and 6 month clothing, but not everything in those sizes fit yet. I haven't tried anything bigger than that yet :)
You're still in size 2 diapers, but I'm going to buy size 3 like tomorrow. I think that means you were only in size 2 for one Costco box.

Notable events

You had your first Easter! No egg hunts for you this year, but we did stick you in a basket filled with eggs, and you really loved munching all the eggs 😂

You met more family! Shayne, Stephanie, Susan, Molly, and Franklin.
You also got a new cousin this month (Tilli), but we haven't met her just yet :)

Tricks/Milestones

You can sit up now! And for longer than a millisecond! You can actually do it indefinitely, as long as you don't lean too far any which way. So I've seen you sit for anywhere from 15 seconds to several minutes. You're doing great, and this mama is so proud! :)

We transitioned you from a swaddle to a sleep sack. I was so worried about this transition! And the first time we did it, it didn't go well. You took like an hour to fall asleep for the night, and there was about 30 minutes of crying. It was so sad :( and then you woke up a few times in the night, but luckily you fell back to sleep on your own. But after that, you did just fine with the sleep sack -- went right to sleep for your first nap the following day. It kind of blew my mind that you adjusted to it so quickly! So now that your arms are free, you end up in all sorts of positions when you sleep! Daddy and I love spying on you with the video monitor :) I literally took screenshots of you sleeping like 50 times this month :) You have started sucking your thumb to self-soothe -- I am pretty sure you always have to have your thumb in your mouth to fall asleep now. Luckily, the thumb-sucking hasn't really left the crib though; the only time you do it outside the crib is when you're tired and ready for a nap, and even then it's only occasionally.

for the first day or two of no swaddle, we put a lovey in your crib, but quickly learned that it was
too hard to tell if you were awake or asleep with it because you would inevitably cover your face.
you also used your thumb to soothe, so i didn't feel bad taking the lovey back out of the crib :)

first (and only) time sleeping on your side. i think you just got stuck mid-roll ;)

Also, a lot of times when you're sucking your thumb, the rest of your hand is open instead of shut, and your fingers like touch your eye. It's so funny, but it's your thing, I guess! :)

Since we were transitioning you to a sleep sack, the sleep expert recommended that we work on rolling over so that you don't get stuck in a position you don't like (kind of wish we wouldn't have followed that advice since you weren't doing any rolling before and now you're rolling and getting stuck in positions you don't like . . . ). So we've been trying to show you how to roll by moving you partway through the roll and letting you finish it. As a result, you are very into rolling back to tummy now! Your arm gets a little stuck, but you're getting lots better at pulling it out now. One day, you kept rolling back to tummy, but once you were on your tummy you'd start fussing (you're not really into tummy-to-back rolling these days). So I'd help you get back to your back, you'd be happy there, and then you'd roll again, and get fussy again! It was so silly -- you wanted to roll, but you didn't want to be on your tummy 😂 You always sleep on your tummy now.
You said your first word (4/14/17)! "Dada" :) You've been babbling for a long time now, but now you distinctly know how to say "dada." It just melts my heart to hear it! Usually you say it a bunch -- "da da da da da da da" -- but one night when I was getting you ready for bed (without Daddy because he was on his way home from work), Daddy got home and when he came in your room and you saw him, you simply said, "Dada!" So I think you may even get it :) Especially since you often say it repetitively when he's not around but should be -- like if it's bedtime but he's not home. It's just so cute :)

We took a break from baby-led weaning and started you with regular baby food. You love it and you totally get the concept of eating that. Maybe we'll go back to BLW this next month.

My favorite things

I still love getting you up from naps, making you laugh, and holding you close. Those things will never get old, I think! Now that you sleep on your tummy, you'll lift your head up and look at us through the crib slats when we come in to get you, and your smile is just always so big! I love it so much :)

I just mentioned this, but I love hearing you say "Dada." I cannot WAIT for you to say "Mama" :)
I also mentioned this, but I love spying on you while you sleep. Every single position you end up in is just adorable to me :)
You're more snuggly this month!! Sometimes after I feed you you'll lay your head down on my chest (in this weird diagonal way though 😂 ) for a minute, and sometimes you'll lay your head on my shoulder when I sing to you before a nap or before bed. Keep those snuggles coming, baby girl! :)

Random tidbits

I haven't updated on what we call you in a while . . . we still call you many things: Ada girl, Ada Potatuh/Tomatuh, Sweet Girl, Sweetheart, Baby Girl, Miss Baby, and probably some other ones. We do call you by name more than ever, though, and it seems as though you recognize it as your name since you often respond by looking up :)
You got sick for the first time in your life! And lucky for me, it wasn't a big deal at all. You actually still seemed totally happy all the time -- except when we were using the nose frida on you. You did not like that! (But it does work really well!) It lasted about a week and we pretty much just had to nose frida you before naps and lay you on a pillow for bed (so that you were at an incline). Sometimes after we'd sucker your nose, you would just be crying and crying, but then I would sing to you, and that always calmed you :)

At the beginning of the month when you weren't sitting up, I helped you work on strengthening your core so you could learn to sit up. I would hold your hands and pull you up just a little bit so you engaged those abs, and then I would take forever actually pulling you into a sitting position. I really think it helped get you to sit up! It's the funniest thing though -- sometimes you try to sit up without help, and it really just ends up looking like you're doing V sits. You'll hold it for forever!
I haven't mentioned this in a while, but you still do great during diaper changes. I don't think you've ever cried during a diaper change in your entire life! And if you're crying before a diaper change, you always stop once the diaper change begins! It's bizarre. But lately you've started to bounce/kick your legs during diaper changes, so that makes it difficult!
I don't think I ever mentioned this on the blog, but you were born with a lot of hair, and not just on your head -- you also had hairy ears. But in the last month or two, your ear hairs have pretty much finished falling out.
Sometimes when I'm feeding you, you tap your fingers on the bottle (like someone would tap their nails on a desk or something). You've held your bottle all by yourself for part of one feeding, but you really just seem content to let someone else hold it. I try to make you hold it but you just let go :)
Whenever I'm carrying you and your bottle at the same time (especially before I've fed you), you lunge for that bottle! And sometimes you get the nipple to your mouth but then get no milk because of the way I'm holding the bottle. It's pretty funny how bad you want the bottle!
On that same note, if you see the bottle and we don't start feeding you right away, you start freaking out! Like you're totally fine if you haven't seen the milk, but once you see it, you get super angry if it's not in your mouth!
Your bald spots are starting to grow in! The hair there is still MUCH shorter than the spots that never went bald, but it's nice to see some brown coming in instead of your white scalp haha :)
On your exersaucer, you really love jamming the tree and the bear in your mouth.

You can kind of buzz, but like with your tongue and cheeks. I'm not sure how to describe it, but you sure get drooly doing it! 😂

You love the tags on things -- the tag on your exersaucer seat, on the tree on your exersaucer, on Todd the Turtle -- any tag you can find, you will shove in your mouth immediately.
I've never mentioned it on the blog (I don't think?) so here's how your bedtime routine goes: One of us (Mama or Daddy) feeds you a bottle while the other one reads scriptures aloud; Daddy changes your diaper and puts you in pajamas; we have family prayer; we turn on your sound machine and turn off the light; we used to swaddle you but now we put you in your sleep sack while we sing "I am a Child of God"; we continue singing while one of us burps you one last time and rocks you over our shoulder; we give you lots of kisses and tell you we love you, then lay you down fully awake and say good night! And you go down like a champ :) Naptime routine is diaper change, book, sound machine on/lights off, sleep sack/song/burp/rock and down :)
Your sleeping is better this month! And no, not because I waited it out and you finally improved. Rather, because I hired a sleep expert. (The last expert that helped us out didn't do it as a full time job, and she had only helped out friends and family up to that point. The new expert does it as a full time job and has helped over 2,000 families.) Things aren't perfect yet (though we've had a few perfect days!) but you are now taking only 3 naps daily (you were taking 5 catnaps before the expert) and I have seen a lot of improvement over the last two weeks (and expect to see further improvement over the next two weeks). You often go back to sleep after waking at 33 minutes, and sometimes you sleep through that transition. You're still sleeping through the night, and in fact you're sleeping better! You're going to sleep a little earlier (usually 6:45/7pm) and sleeping in later -- until about 7 now (give or take 15 minutes) -- which is a welcome change from your previous 6:15am wakeups! I'm pretty sure the money spent on the sleep expert was the best money I've ever spent! Now I'm just crossing my fingers that you don't do your usual thing, which is to give me a few perfect naps and then revert to your old ways 😉
Sometimes we have dance parties and you smile a lot :) I love it! Yay for dance parties now and always! 😘 😘

Love always,

Mama