Elizabeth is so precious. Y'know how parents always say how fast their kids are growing up? Well, not really Elizabeth. I feel like she was a newborn for a few months and then she's been her current self for a few months. She's still behind (in my opinion) developmentally as far as stuff like standing, sitting, rolling, crawling, eating, etc. It doesn't worry me because socially and mentally, she's perfect. And not everyone can be above average unless you live in lake woebegone. So, even though this is an 8 month update, it's kind of like her 4-8 month update. ; )
In no particular order
Elizabeth loves to eat. And I love to nurse her. So I nurse her when she wakes up, and before she goes to sleep, and anytime she wakes up during the night. So basically, a million times a day. With Abigail, I would never have indulged myself like this for fear of making bad habits. But this time? I love it too much and I'm enjoying it too much. I have serious anxiety about how I'll likely only nurse two or three more babies and that makes me so sad. How am I already half way through this mothering babies thing??? Anyway, she nurses a lot. So I have to reeeeally remind myself to give her solids. She's barely had any. I mean, like maybe I'll give her half a jar one time during the day and then not even give her any the next day. Mostly because solids are a pain and nursing is great. And it's not like I'm starving her... Have you seen her cheeks?
Because they're huge. My best guess is that they're the biggest muscle in her body and the reason behind that is because they're getting a constant workout with how much she smiles. She has got to be the smiliest baby ever. And still, you can't make eye contact with her without her smiling and laughing. It's amazing. Except when I'm in a hurry for her to eat and she'll do that thing where she sucks two times and then looks up at me to smile and laugh and then sucks two times and laughs. Repeat forever until I give up feeding her.
She still has no teeth but has been teething hardcore forever. She's just a super oral kid, but MAN how she yells and chomps when she gets going! Maybe solids will go more easily when she has teeth. My other two kids loved jarred baby food and would only eat something if it was a perfect liquid puréed consistency. Elizabeth actually does a lot better with thick or chunky food. When it's too liquidy, her wild tongue pushes it out before she can swallow it, but she does awesome with banana chunks and mashed up pears. I think magi is her favorite food though. That one actually is a jar and is practically like water so I have to add the oatmeal cereal to thicken it. But holy cow does she love it. She's not a fan of peas or green beans yet though. I have two good eaters... I'm pretty determined not to get a picky eater now. ; )
Elizabeth has been wearing costco size 1/2 (that's the intermediate size I guess) for a while and just used her last one today. So tomorrow she'll start wearing 2's during the day. She was wearing 2's at night (I always size up) and leaking through all the time (because she eats so much during the night) and I'm not sure why I didn't size up again (probably because I'm brain dead these days) but within the last week, I've put her in a three at night and we're all good now.
For convenience purposes, all of our kids get out to bed at the same time and (probably because of Brady but I'm not sure because I'm always still sleeping), all of our kids wake up at the same time too. So, Elizabeth goes to bed (typically) when the other kids do... But because our evenings vary a lot based on when honey gets home, this really could be anytime between 6:30 and 8.
Ever since we got back from panama/atlanta, her sleep has been far less than before. She got really sick on our trip and the traveling and everything was just a lot. But, I haven't seemed to care enough to really do anything about it so right now I just do what's easiest for me (sorry Elizabeth). I give her two opportunities to nap and its her choice what she does with that. A typical (give or take) day this past week or two is that she'll wake up around 7:45 and I put her down around 9:45. She wakes up by noon and then naps again from 2-4 or so and then is down for the night by 7. She spends a lot of time being tired, but honestly, I'm not a fan of having three naps, so if she wants more sleep then maybe she can go back to her three and four hour naps. Also, when we got back from our trip, she started waking up during the 11 o lock hour in addition to her normal once in the middle of the night. Then it even was waking up at 11:30, 2:30, 6:30 and then up for the day by nine. But last night and tonight she hasn't woken up that first time. Well, tonight she did, but I just watched her on the monitor for 30 minutes while she put herself back to sleep. So I guess she's working on that. We'll see how things progress but it seems like she's going back to the just once a night that she's been doing since she hit her four month sleep regression.
As far as clothes go, she's pretty close to wearing the size that correlates with her age. Right now I'd say that six month clothing fits her best, but there's plenty of stuff I've pulled out for her in larger sizes that she pulls off just fine. This is something that is new to me, especially with these girl clothes. Abigail was just such a different build and was still wearing 0-3 onesies at this point so it's crazy to me that I can put Elizabeth in 9 month onesies and she does just fine. The girl is a fatty (at least as far as my kids go) and it's actually nice because she fills out her clothes better than Abigail ever did.
Elizabeth didn't really bear weight on her legs at all til maybe six weeks ago or so and she didn't get reliably good at sitting until this past week. Within the last two days, she has started to roll from back to belly consistently. And my consistently I don't mean that it happens all the time, just that it happens enough that I know it wasn't an accident. She still doesn't roll from belly to back or using rolling to get from one place to another. These things (combined with nursing all the time and having zero teeth) really have made it feel like she hasn't aged at all in the last several months. But I feel like maybe we're getting into the next four month chunk and she's gonna have some pretty major changes coming up. But who knows.
I can't really think what else to say about her. She's so much like Abigail was and she's insanely oral. She especially loves Sophie the giraffe and the silky tags on her Aden and Anais blankets (but she'll take any silky tags really). She's just starting to like the jumper but she tires of it pretty quickly (as opposed to Abigail who stayed in it for over an hour at a time, multiple times a day from the time she was three months old). Elizabeth loves social interaction and yells a lot when she's not getting the attention she wants. She'll cry eventually if she's hurt or super tired or sad, but really, she spends much of her waking hours just yelling at us. Not sure if that's teething or just her personality coming out. ; )
We all love her so much. She brings such a sweet peace to our family and is able to dissolve contention faster than anything else. Brady is still obsessed with her and calls her Libby and Abigail still loves to talk to her in a baby voice and call her elizabee. They both like calling her Libby-Beth.
I call her dearest, loveliest Elizabeth.
No comments:
Post a Comment