7 Months with C

Holy cow, we have a 7-month old (as of yesterday). I love her more every single day.

C at 7 Months

I’m a broken record on this, but C is SO FUN. She is so silly, so happy, and so chill. When she’s working on a new skill, she practices it relentlessly. She loves to explore and experiment, always trying to go find a different part of the room to check out or put her toys together.

She initiates her favorite games. At the moment, those are fake coughing at each other, peekaboo behind a curtain, and a nameless one where she crawls as fast as she can toward something she knows she shouldn’t grab until she gets close, and then stops to look over her shoulder to make sure someone is watching and going to tell her “no, no, no,” and scoop her up and wrestle around with her. Her smiles are big and genuine, often accented by sweet giggles, and within the last few days starting to be accompanied by the loudest delighted squeals. She is finding her voice.

Crawling and sitting up happened simultaneously in the last 2 weeks or so.

For a few weeks, she would rock back and forth on all fours, crawl with only her legs and then belly flop, crawl backwards a few steps, or shift from all fours to side-saddle sitting. And then one day, she sat all the way up and also crawled forward. Now that she’s crawling, she’s realized walking would be better. She spends a lot of time putting both feet on the floor and trying to push herself up. She doesn’t quite have the balance for standing on her own just yet, but she can totally get herself there with a hand or a sturdy object.

We’ve introduced a bunch of foods to her (via baby-led weaning). Including her in dinner is the best, and it happens to help us mostly avoid pre-bedtime meltdowns. C has always done extremely well when she has new things/places/people to explore, and giving her a chunk of meat and some vegetables at dinnertime keeps her pretty occupied for 20-30 minutes. She spends the most time on meat, asparagus, fruit, and sourdough.

C now has four teeth. They are razors and she has a strong jaw. Bites hurt. She has some other teeth giving her trouble and working their way down, but I don’t think they’re too close to cutting through just yet.

In the half hour or so after she wakes up from nights or naps, C is happy to play all by herself, whether we’re in the room or not. After that, she usually likes to be able to see someone and gets sad if we leave the room.

Sleep

Bedtime is usually not a big deal. Putting C down for the first time usually takes 20-45 minutes, including story time and Jack heating up a bottle of milk if she’s extra hungry. If she needs anything after that, it’s typically only once and takes around 5-15 minutes.

Usually, she lets me nurse her to sleep. Occasionally, she decides she wants to put herself to sleep after she’s full of milk. Sometimes, she decides that and then realizes sleep is actually kind of tricky, and wants me to come back and provide more milk or cuddles. We play it by ear and make it work.

Occasionally, she gets up once during the night and once during the 5:30-6:30am hour right now. Most of the rest of the time, it’s just during the 5:30-6:30am hour. This works pretty well for me, since she usually needs her diaper changed once to avoid leaks, and I’m usually up around 5 to pump. Most of the time, she just needs nursed and goes right back to sleep, either in my arms or shortly after I set her in her crib.

Naps are less tricky than it used to be, but still not that consistent. C mostly seems to do better with 2 naps a day. This works well when her morning nap is over 1.5 hours and she doesn’t wake up before 7. Her second nap is very often 30 minutes and if that ends before 3, the end of the day can get a little tough. I hope for at least one good nap a day, and usually get it in the morning. When she wakes up mad from a too-short nap, I can often nurse her back to sleep for a bit. I’ll take decent night sleep over great naps.

I usually start getting her ready for bed between 6:45 and 7, and put her down for the first time around 7:15-7:30. Some nights, she’s up at 11:30 and then sleeps the rest of the night till she needs a little milk around 6. Other nights, she sleeps till 4:30 and then gets up for a little more milk at 6. Others, she just gets up at 5:45 for some milk and goes back to sleep.

I’m sleeping okay most nights, but it could be better. I try to go up to bed around 9pm-10pm, read for a few minutes, and then pass out. And then I usually wake up once in anticipation of C waking up and once if she wakes up. Depending on when I went to bed and how tired I am, I get up between 5 and 6. This is the best way to make sure I can pump 5+ ounces of milk, which is about how much she takes if she needs extra before bed. C is usually up for the day between 7 and 8. If she gets up any earlier, I try to nurse her back to sleep or let her play in her crib unless she’s mad.

Feeding

C eats very well, and is still extremely distractible when nursing. If she hears Jack’s voice from the basement office or we’re in a non-home environment, she will often decide she can’t eat because the world is too interesting. She also does not appreciate being covered up while she’s eating, so I can’t just throw a blanket on us to block out the world. This means that many nights we need to give her at least a couple ounces of pumped milk – and usually more like 5 ounces – before bed because she realizes she’s starving after not eating enough during the day.

Schedule

Right now, C eats every 3ish hours. I offer a nap about 2.5-3 hours after she wakes from her last one. Bedtime is usually about 4 hours after her last nap. If she nurses, gets a little sleepy, and wakes back up when she’s full, either at naptime or bedtime, I usually wait a bit before trying to get her to sleep again.

This is her favorite time to play the aforementioned crawling-toward-things-she-shouldn’t game. Seems like it should be counterproductive to play very physical and engaging games with her right before bed. But it works for us and it’s a lot of fun.

Things I Don’t Want to Forget

• How peaceful she looks when she falls asleep on me. It’s harder and harder to put her down because I adore the cuddles. But she usually sleeps better on her own for the most part.
• Her morning smiles – and her smiles any time I turn the light on in her room and she realizes she gets to play more.
• She kicks faster than I knew was possible when she’s in the bath. Bath result in our whole kitchen being soaked.
• C loves the tags on her toys. She alternates between shoving them in her mouth and babbling around them and examining them between her fingers.
• How active she is when she’s nursing. She kicks her legs in every direction, her hands grab at my face, and sometimes she crawls around to get to a different position, all while drinking.
• She alternates between grabbing her hair and holding the bottle and putting her hands in my mouth when she’s eating from a bottle.
• Instead of dramatically rolling away from me when she’s done nursing, she now uses her very strong core to try and sit up.
• She blows the most earnest raspberries, like she’s trying to tell us something very important.
• How she calms down and gets so excited the second I pull out a book to read.
• She thinks it’s absolutely hilarious when we yawn.
• When she wants picked up for any reason, she reaches for you. Usually, she’ll then lay her head on your shoulder for at least a second and it melts my heart.
• One of her newer distress / please-pick-me-up sounds is “ma ma ma ma.” I pretend this is the beginning of her saying “mama,” though I think she’s probably too young for that and probably says it to everyone right now.
• She loves to watch and touch Ben. This usually means essentially laying her tummy on his back and grabbing some hair from his scruff. (We monitor to make sure he’s not annoyed or startled, and we let him decide when he’s done.)

Things We Use and Love

• Pretty much everything from her 2-month post. She doesn’t love the pacifiers except to bite. She has outgrown the Podster, but it served us well when she was teeny.
• Pretty much everything from her 3-month post.
• Pretty much everything from her 4-month post. We’re done with the weighted sleep sacks, but I’d use them for a future kiddo.
• Pretty much everything from her 5-month post.
• Pretty much everything from her 6-month post.
• This play mat. All our floors are hard and slippery, so this is a decent place for C to play. It’s slightly cushioned, so I like coming down to the floor and sitting on it, too. C often rolls off of it and onto the slippery floor, but she always comes back.