11 month update

We can't believe that in only one month, our little baby will be a year old! This month Amanda has really increased her mobility. Her favourite thing is to cruise around, and around, and around the living room and upstairs hallway, holding on to the furniture or walls. She also loves to be in the kitchen (which can be kind of irritating!) and throws the plastic containers all over the floor on a regular basis. She can stand on her own now, although she doesn't realize it yet - she will occasionally do it by accident, but then when she realizes she's not holding on, she clutches at whatever is in front of her! She is also an excellent walker, but not quite on her own yet. She can walk with her toy walkers, or holding on to a finger (even just a single finger). We think she will probably be walking on her own in the next week or two, but our guess is definitely by her birthday. She has now progressed to mostly table foods. She still has baby cereal, fruit, and yogurt for breakfast (to help keep her iron up), but eats lots of "big people" foods at her other meals. She loves the little fruity yogurt cups and is still crazy about her Baby Mum-Mum crackers. And banana is our secret weapon - even if she acts full (after having a really tiny meal), we can usually get her to eat a whole banana afterwards! And she will eat anything mixed with banana (even ground beef - yuck! That's one of Daddy's concoctions). We are still a bit concerned about her weight - she lost a bit more this month, although mid-month weighings showed that she actually had dipped down well below 19 lbs, so at least she has regained from that. The doctor isn't too worried, but we're trying to make sure she gets lots of food in her at every feeding. We are going ahead with introducing most foods now, although we will still wait on eggs, honey, and milk until one year, and nuts until at least 18 months. Her second tooth finally came in - after 3 weeks of teething! - so now she has a matched set on the bottom. After only a few days of respite (i.e., improved sleep), she started teething on the next ones, although we haven't figured out yet which ones will be next (it looks like she may even get another bottom tooth before the top ones? Who knows). The good news: if given ibuprofen in the evening to deal with the teething pain, Amanda will now give us full nights of sleep fairly regularly - usually 10-12 hours. Hooray!!

10 month update

This has been quite a difficult month. Jeff was away for two weeks, chaperoning a school trip to Europe, and during that time Amanda got a terrible cold. (She had a cold when she was about 3 months as well, but this one was much worse). It has been almost two weeks now and she is finally showing signs of improvement, after several days on antibiotics to treat chest congestion. Because she lost her appetite while sick, Amanda actually lost weight this month, pushing her down to the 36th percentile for weight! She is starting to lose a lot of her cute baby fat! She has also been very mobile this month, which is contributing to her weight loss as well. We're sure that now her appetite is returning, she will gain the weight back quickly. Amanda has also started feeding herself lots of finger foods this month...she finally seems to have made the hand-mouth connection! She loves Cheerios, rice rusks, small pieces of meat, and cooked veggies. She is really enjoying her newfound mobility...she loves to crawl and cruise around the entire upstairs. Of course this means more work for Mom & Dad! She is still using the modified "Quasimodo crawl", and we think she will just stick with this since she seems much more interested in walking. She hasn't said anything that we would consider a "first word", but she seems to be quite close to saying a few words - especially "kitty", since she loves the cats at Grandma & Grandpa's house! She talks all the time and has lots of inflection in her voice, so it sounds just like she is speaking, even though we can't understand the words yet. Her sleeping has gone off track a bit in the past couple of weeks due to her illness, but she seems to be improving (finally!). We still have only one tooth, although the matching one is right below the surface. She has been teething on this one for at least two weeks now, complete with lots of drooling, chewing, and pain...hopefully all the teeth won't take this long or be this difficult in coming in! This month we also found a great daycare that it looks like we will be sending Amanda to in September (she will be home with Jeff over the summer). It feels good to know that she will be well-taken care of... one less thing to worry about!

9 month update

It is hard to believe that Amanda has now been alive "outside" for as long as she was alive "inside"! This has been a very big month in terms of milestones. It's now a race to see whether Amanda will crawl or walk first! She has just started doing a modified crawl in which she moves forward on her hands, dragging her legs behind her (we call her Quasimodo!). But mostly she just uses this as a means towards getting to the furniture so she can pull herself up...she really wants to be standing all the time. She has become very adept at pulling up on almost anything, even just a knee! She has just started cruising on the furniture, and will "walk" for quite aways with someone holding onto her hands. She can also stand unassisted for several seconds at a time before toppling over! This month Mandy finally got her first tooth - one of the bottom front ones. We had a few very sleepless nights, but otherwise it was relatively painless for her and for us! So far she only has the one tooth, so she will have a very cute lopsided grin for awhile until its partner comes in. Amanda continues to be a very vocal baby - she has almost got "mama" and "dada" down, using them mostly for the appropriate person. We have added lots of new foods to her diet, and she continues to enjoy eating solid foods, although her appetite changes greatly from day to day. We've started her on some finger foods, but she's not that interested...everything else the girl touches goes directly into her mouth, but when we actually give her FOOD, she looks at us like "what the heck am I supposed to do with this?". She does love the rice rusk teething biscuits - the only thing she will consistently feed herself. We have finally made some headway in our ongoing sleep issues...we are attempting to convince her to go to sleep on her own (without nursing to sleep), while avoiding "crying it out". Although it's been a struggle, it is working very well. After only a couple of nights, we have gone from 3-4 night wakings (with much difficulty going back to sleep) to only one after 7-9 hours of sleep (sometimes she goes right back to sleep, sometimes not). It is encouraging to finally see some progress!

8 month update

This month has just flown by! We have continued to have some problems with sleeping, some of which seemed to be due to something she was eating. So we cut back all her food and have slowly re-introduced each type of food...so far, so good! As a result, though, poor Amanda is still only getting a few types of food. Within a few more days we will have re-introduced everything (rice, oatmeal, bananas, peaches, sweet potatoes, carrots, and chicken), and can start with some new foods - we hope to try Cheerios, since she is just starting to get into finger foods, and then maybe some teething biscuits and more fruits and veggies. Speaking of teething, still nothing...we think Amanda may be the first five year old without any teeth! Just kidding...mom is actually happy to have avoided dealing with the biting issue thus far. Mandy is very close to crawling; she lunges forward from a sitting position and rocks back and forth from her bum to her knees. The only problem she has is that she gets one leg stuck under her (still in the sitting position)... once she figures out how to move that leg, we anticipate that she'll be off to the races! (Something else we are a bit ambivalent about...it sure has been nice to have a less-than-mobile baby!). For the time being she manages to move, albeit slowly, by scooting on her rear end and squirming on her tummy. She is vocalizing a lot and has started to call us "mamamamama" and "dadadadada", although it's not perfect yet (she uses both for both of us). We also get a lot of ba, la, bla, and ga sounds, and the occasional ka. We have finished our swimming lessons - some classes were better than others, but it seems that her general lack of sleep these days makes her a bit grouchy in the pool (and sometimes out of the pool too!). Our new mom & baby group is going very well...those Friday afternoons are a life- saver! We have also started to see the very first signs that she is signing back to us, although it's still a bit sketchy...she makes something approximating the "milk" sign when she is getting hungry. Hopefully we will see more signs in the weeks to come.

7 month update

Amanda is 7 months old today! The Health Unit scale told us that she weighed exactly the same as she did at her 6 month doctor's appointment (18 lbs, 5 oz), but she had grown a bit, to 27". (I'm sure she has actually gained a few ounces, as the scales aren't too accurate and her weight depends on when her last feeding was). We had a wonderful first Christmas and enjoyed showing Amanda off to our family and friends! She was very well behaved (she even attended Midnight Mass!), but it took us awhile to get her back on schedule after the holidays were over. We are still on tooth-watch...we keep thinking she will get a tooth or two any day, but so far we haven't seen any! She is definitely keeping us on our toes sleep-wise; we have had several full 12-hour nights of sleep, but they are interspersed with terrible nights where she is up two or three times. Amanda is continuing to enjoy solids - we have now had rice and oat cereals, as well as sweet potato, banana (her very favourite!), and carrots. We also tried barley cereal, but she was waking up every night with screaming fits, so we think it gave her a tummy ache. Still nothing on the crawling front, which suits us just fine! But she is starting to pull herself up on the side of her crib - so far she can do this from a sitting position only (and she can't get herself into this position, she has to be sat up by someone else), but we are anticipating that she will figure it out soon and we'll have to lower the crib mattress. Amanda also started swimming lessons yesterday, but it didn't go too well - she cried through the whole lesson. She was a bit tired, so we'll hope that she enjoys it more next time. We will go twice a week for five weeks. We are also starting a new mom & baby group with several of the people we've met, since our babies have outgrown the mom & baby group we used to attend! It's hard to believe - I remember starting to go when Amanda was only a month old, and she was so tiny compared to all the other babies. I couldn't believe she would one day be four or five months old...and now she is seven months old! Time is going by so quickly.