Monthly Photos: Month 7

Sweet little one is 7 months old! It seems as though not too much has changed this past month. Still super fun and happy. She has mastered sitting without assistance, but will still tump over occasionally. She has her 2 bottom teeth but no others have come through yet.

Size: Last week when she was sick the doctor weighed her at 19 lbs. 10 oz. She wears 9-12 month clothes mostly, and size 3 in disposable diapers.

Likes: Getting out and about, being around people/babies, morning walks, her jumperoo, sleeping on her tummy (with her hiney in the air - it is the cutest thing), baths, putting everything in her mouth, and dogs (she will squeal with delight when we carry her and chase one of our family member's dogs around the house).

Dislikes: Bottles (we have pretty much given up), all food including rice cereal, various baby foods, homemade purees, small bits of fruit for her to pick up herself, etc. I have tried letting her bite off some of my banana, or gnaw on a slice of apple - she immediately realizes it is food and will not put it in her mouth! The closest she has come to liking something was while holding a (peeled) grape or a strawberry and letting her kind of suck on it. Although when we gave her a tiny piece to put in her mouth she acted like she was being gagged/tortured. But hey, she is clearly getting enough milk (see thighs) so I'm not worried. We are taking it easy on the food and will maybe try again in a few weeks.

Working On: Crawling - she likes to get her legs going and can move around by pivoting and scooting, but hasn't crawled yet. I have been trying to teach her the sign for milk for the past month or so. She can do the movement with her hand but hasn't figured out that it means milk yet. I also say "mama" and "dada" to her a lot, but she hasn't made any attempts to say it yet.

Eating: Still 100% milk since she is not interested in food. She nurses about 7-8 times a day including once at night.


Sleeping: Her bedtime routine is working out great. Goes down between 7 and 7:30 with usually no crying (sometimes a few minutes of fussing). Most nights she wakes up once to eat around 3 or 4 am. She usually wakes up around 6:15 or 6:30am. She takes about 3 naps a day and they always vary in length. Lately her first is approx 45min-1hr, her second is 1-1.5 hrs, and her third is about 30 min.

And as I say every month, she is not on a schedule, but that seems to be working for both of us. A schedule would be nice in knowing when she is going to nap so I could better plan play dates, doctor appointments, etc, but I do like that she can kind of just go with the flow. I have had it suggested to wake her up at the same time every day to help get on a schedule, but I just can't bring myself to wake up that early. She already gets up fairly early, and sometimes even gets up in the 5's. When she does that, I feed her and put her back down because that is just too early. She will usually sleep until about 7 something when that happens and I enjoy the extra sleep. Anyway, I am fine with how things are now, and we will see if they change in the future.

I feel like this past month has flown by. On one hand I can't believe she is already 7 months old, but on the other it feels like we have had her for so much longer! She is so sweet and happy and so much fun. I think she gets cuter all the time. I still kiss her dozens of times a day. Even after she goes to bed I look at the monitor a million times just to see her cute sleeping positions. Babies are such a joy.

Sick Day

When I was a kid, if my sister or I got sick we would get the royal treatment. My parents were so sweet and compassionate towards us. My mom would line the couch with comforters and a couple pillows for us to lay on all day. We would get our meals served to us on a tray on the couch. My mom would buy us crossword puzzle books or a magazine or rent a movie. It was so nice you almost didn't want to get better, ha!

Cambry is sick today so we are just hanging out at home on this rainy Wednesday. She had a fever yesterday and this morning, but it seems to be gone now. Last night she was very restless. She had a runny nose and a cough. We went to the doctor this morning and she has little red blisters in the back of her throat which they said indicates a virus.

She seems to be doing better already than she was last night, and even though she is a little fussy I am still getting smiles. As for her royal treatment, I am holding and rocking and reading to her more, and letting her nurse as often as she wants...which is all the time! I even let her sit on my lap and watch some of her Praise Baby DVD, which up to this point I have only let her listen to.

I am thankful that it is nothing serious and that I get to stay home and love on my baby.

Family Weekend

This weekend we got to see both sides of our family. Kyler turned 2 on Sunday so we had planned to drive to Dallas on Saturday and stay for his family party on Sunday. Then last minute we decided to drive to Waco Friday evening and stay the night so we could break up the long drive to Dallas. Greg's parents were sweet to let us come last minute and we enjoyed our visit even though it was short.

Saturday morning we drove into Dallas. We met our friends Matt and Emily and their 2 sweet kids for lunch. We hadn't seen them in so long so it was fun to catch up.

The Kimmels weren't getting back from their NY trip until evening so we walked around the mall and got Cold Stone ice cream. Yum. I have been craving some cake batter ice cream since I was pregnant with Cambry. They closed all the Cold Stones in Houston (although I think there are still some on the outskirts in the Woodlands, Sugarland, etc) so I can never get it. It was such a treat!

That evening we had fun chatting with my parents and the Kimmels. Sunday we celebrated Kyler turning 2. What a cute, sweet boy! I think he had a great day.

Cooking Shortcuts

I really enjoy cooking, but I don't always want to spend a lot of time prepping a meal. I can do parts of the prep work throughout the day, and Cambry is good at playing in her jumper in the kitchen or sitting in her high chair with toys watching me. However, it seems like there are always other things to get done so I don't want to use a bunch of time cooking.

Lately I have been taking a few shortcuts like using frozen pre-chopped veggies (like onions) instead of fresh, using a tube of cilantro paste instead of chopping fresh, or leaving out some ingredients if they are difficult. And for rice I just buy the 90 second bags of plain brown rice. I kind of hate doing that because I'm cheap, but sometimes the desire to save time trumps the desire to save money.

I have a few quick go-to meals for those nights when there is no time for prep, and am looking for more. One of my quick meals is breakfast for dinner. We used to do this every Sunday night but ended up getting a little burned out on it. We do eggs over easy and turkey bacon on english muffins and smoothies. We still do this fairly often but not every Sunday. Doing a super easy Sunday dinner is one of my goals in order to make Sundays as relaxed as possible. I don't do anything fancy on Sundays.

One of my other go-to meals is stir fry. I almost always have the ingredients on hand and it is really easy to do - no chopping (except for chicken) and no measuring. I do have fancier stir fry recipes that I make sometimes, but when it comes to a quick dinner I just keep it simple. The frozen bags of stir fry veggies and pepper/onion blend are great. Add some soy sauce or other sauce, cashews or sesame seeds, and it is a great quick meal.

My last go-to meal is tilapia. We almost always have frozen tilapia fillets on hand. They thaw out so quickly, and all I do is pan fry them with some olive oil and seasoning.

If all else fails then I eat a Healthy Choice meal. I usually only buy them when Greg is out of town. I am too lazy to cook anything if it is just for me.

Play Date

I went to a play date last week with some of the other moms in our Sunday school class. I think Cambry enjoyed being around all the other babies, and I definitely enjoyed chatting with my friends. Kellie took a picture of all the little ones. Considering no one is screaming or crying in the picture and most are looking in the general direction of the camera, I think it was a huge success! I need to start taking more pictures at play dates because I think it will be fun too look at pictures of Cambry with other little babies and see how they change over the years.

Thanks Kellie for the pictures!

(Callie Beth, Wes, Carter, Roane, Zachary, Cambry, Maelee, Max)

Happy 4th!

We had a nice 4th of July yesterday. It was fun to have family time since Greg had a day off work. It was kind of nice that it fell in the middle of the week because it felt like an extra mini weekend. Although if I was the one working I would rather have a 3 day weekend. We did some stuff around the house and then went to the pool in the afternoon. We had friends over in the evening for dinner and games, which is always fun. Of course I had to dress little one up and take pictures. This is our niece Hollyn's dress - it is size 12-18 months but it fit Cambry -ha! I tied a blue ribbon on it to add some patriotic flare. Why is it so fun to dress up babies for holidays?

By the way, Cambry's new thing is to scrunch up her nose and breath in and out of her nose real fast. It is so funny. It's like one day she just discovered her face could do that and now she does it all the time. She is doing it a little bit in some of the pictures, but not full out.

Boutique and Grocery Shopping

Is it just me or does there seem to be no baby boutiques in Houston? Well I just discovered one - Dimples. I think it has been there about a year but I just found out about it.

It is on 19th street in the Heights. It is really cute. Their stuff is pricey, but that is to be expected from a boutique. They had some really adorable clothes and accessories. Bows/headbands/clips are my weakness so I got 2 flower clips for Cambry. They stay in pretty well too. Anyway, they aren't paying me or anything to write this, I just wanted to share since I have been looking for a cute baby boutique and finally found one!

Speaking of shopping, this week I put Cambry in the child seat in the cart for the first time. I know I just wrote about how I love wearing her (and I still do), but since she is sitting up on her own now I was excited to use my cart cover. It only took me 10 minutes to set it up, figure out the straps, get her in, and attach her toys in the parking lot - ha, new mom alert! I think she liked it.