This little lady is officially 8 months old (on 12/23.) Time has absolutely flown. In the name of documentation, here are some things that are new in her world:
-Eating finger foods like a champ. She would probably prefer solely eating finger foods, because whenever I bust out that little plastic spoon and the pureed goodness it's war. (Slight exaggeration, she's actually a very good eater. She just enjoys feeding herself and doesn't seem to enjoy as much when she doesn't have control.)
-Crawling everywhere. She was a little wobbly and slow at first (starting around 7 months) but she is actually quite speedy now.
-Pulling up on anything and everything that her little chubby hands can reach. Quite often that includes my legs.
-Has FOUR teeth! She got her first two teeth (the bottom middle 2) at about 5 months and the two on either side of those teeth broke through yesterday. I love her little snaggle-tooth smile :)
-Making raspberry sounds. She loves to play the imitation game. If you blow a raspberry at her, she'll do it back to you. So much fun.
-Waving! She started this when her Great Grandpa was waving at her on Christmas and all of a sudden, a sweet little hand went up and down in the air! Sometimes she puts her whole arm into it, sometimes she just grabs the air with her hand. Love seeing her learn and associate words with actions.
-(Speaking of words...) I think she has a growing understanding of the word "no"... actually "no ma'am" which is what we say to her most frequently. Tyler and I have both seen her stop what she's doing when we say, "No ma'am!" firmly. Still hasn't worked in trying to teach her not to stand in her crib or in the bath tub. I feel like my life lately has been spent sitting/laying her back down and saying, "No ma'am. Elle, we don't stand in the crib/bathtub." Sheesh
-Still crying herself to sleep... this has been not so fun for me. Or anyone really. It brings lots of anxiety and stress. We decided, after we were done traveling for the holidays, to buckle down. I committed to not going in and interacting with her for as long or as often. It. Has. Been. ROUGH. I think, in large part, due to her teeth coming through. I've struggled with this, because everything in me wants to abandon our plan because she's been teething. I want to blame all her sleeping struggles on this. And it MAY be that, but I don't think it's wise for me to cave in and rock her to sleep or let her sleep with us every night because she's hurting. I've been giving her baby ibuprofen and trying to stick with it. There have been several days where she has cried right through every nap and then falls asleep eating in the evening because she's so exhausted. We're on day 4 of this bootcamp and I'm giving it until Sunday. Hopefully we'll see some progress by then. Progress at this point would look like less than 45 minutes of crying :(. And naps longer than 30 minutes after falling asleep. Not fun for anyone, I say.
[We did have one night where she fell asleep after only 2 minutes of crying AND put herself back to sleep in the middle of the night after only 20 minutes of crying. I think this was God's gift to me to help me press on. I can totally handle 2 minutes of crying!]
I hate to end on that note. Because this has been the best month by far.
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