My favorite moments: I love taking you for walks in the stroller and watching you take everything in. You sit straight up in the front of the stroller holding onto the tray so you won't miss anything. It doesn't matter how cold it is, you will not lay back and let me bundle you up. Being outside is still one of your favorite things and makes you happy no matter how tired or fussy you are. I love watching you play by yourself in the living room. You do really well occupying yourself with your toys and usually only get antsy when your tired or hungry. You still aren't much for reading books, mainly because that requires you to sit still longer than you like. Hopefully that will change since I have gotten you about a zillion books already! I love watching you when dad gets home in the evenings. You grin ear to ear and kick your feet like crazy or bounce up and down if you are standing.
Clara quirks: These days trying to put a clean diaper on you is like an all out wrestling match. I have to bribe you with toys so you will lay still and even that doesn't always work. This week you learned all kinds of new "challenges" which includes pulling your toys out of your toy box all by yourself and opening the cabinets and dresser drawers. You are completely mesmerized by Baby Einstein Old MacDonald. You won't watch any of the other videos I have for you so we just sit in the exersaucer and watch old MacDonald every time I need a shower while you are awake. Maybe all that exposure to farm life is why you weren't at all afraid when we took you to grandpa's farm over Thanksgiving. You got to see the cows, pet the horse, ride on the tractor and the 4-wheeler (going very slow I might add). You loved it all!
Nap/Sleep: The last couple of months have been mixed with good weeks and bad weeks during the night. You will go a couple of weeks sleeping from 8pm - 5am, have a bottle at 5am then sleep till 8am. But then something will happen, either we travel or have company or you don't feel well and you will start this waking up every 2 hours nonsense. Each time it seems to last 4-5 days then you go back to your regular schedule. Thanksgiving was rough because we were out of town for 4 nights so by the last night you got up every hour during the night. Thankfully it only took you two nights to get back on schedule once we got home. Probably because you were exhausted!! This week you seem to be doing better about when you need a bottle and making it until 7am then going back to sleep for one or two more hours. Naps are going great. You still take 3 naps a day usually 45min - 1h & 15min. I've tried letting you get away with two naps when you have taken an extra long early afternoon nap and every time you've been a cranky mess by 7pm so we are sticking with 3 naps for the immediate future. You rarely cry now when we lay you down in your crib to go to sleep. I guess you know now that it doesn't help to cry because mom still isn't going to let you get up. The few times I have gone in there because you were crying you had dropped your pacie outside the crib and who could go to sleep without their pacie!
Eating: By your 8 month birthday you were completely weened. We tried Enfamil formula but that didn't seem to suit your system very well and made you spit up even worse than normal, not to mention you really didn't like it.The Similac you take just as well as breast milk and seem to spit up about the same so that is what we have kept you on. When we stopped nursing, it didn't bother you one bit. As long as you got your milk you didn't care where it came from. You eat one solid meal a day which usually consists of half a jar of fruit and half to 3/4 a jar of vegetable. Sometimes some rice cereal or oatmeal. Fruit and sweet potatoes is definitely your favorite although you have gotten better about eating things like peas and green beans even though they definitely aren't your preference. We have also started giving you puffs which is super convenient when I'm trying to keep you occupied while I cook dinner. It took you a while to be able to get them in your mouth by yourself because they would stick to your fingers once your fingers got wet but now you eat them without a problem and beg for more. This week we gave you some whole peas which you loved and did really well picking up and eating by yourself. On Thanksgiving we gave you pureed turkey which I thought tasted disgusting, mainly because the texture was awful but you didn't seem to mind and ate it without any problem.
Mobility: You are crawling all over the place and getting into everything!! You will use just about anything stationary (and some not so stationary things like Abby) to pull up on so you can stand. You cruise across the room holding onto the furniture and can walk behind your push toy as long as we are holding onto it. Today you started walking while holding my hands. Your balance is still pretty shaky but you are fearless kid! I think your balance would be a lot better if it weren't that you get so excited you start bouncing up and down.
Love watching you grow and learn little girl!! Your smile melts my heart. Just don't grow up too fast.
Bunny pictures are getting increasingly more difficult now that we are mobile.
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