It has cooled off significantly in the Midwest, and I’ve been spending lots of time indoors, looking through photos of my darling little girl – like the ones below. These reminded me of a beautiful afternoon we spent outside early this fall, when E was around 6 months old.

E proved to be quite the little nature lover.  Just look at those inquisitive eyes!

See how happy E is to be outside? Her daddy was working on the shed, and she and I just had a blast hanging out on the quilt, playing with her toys, feeling the grass, watching bees fly around, and talking to our neighbor, too!

She really seems to love this little beach ball. In my head, I hear her saying “oh, beach ball, don’t ever leave me!”.  You hear now it too, don’t you!!!

This one might be my favorite of all of these pictures. She was DRAWN to the grass. So cool and smooth on her fingers. Such a bright, inviting green. Just look at the determination on her little face!

She would rush over to the edge of the quilt to grab handfuls of the grass, and a couple times, she put the handful right into her mouth – AAAACK!  Most of the time, though, she’d look at it in her fingers, roll it around in her chubby little hand, and then I’d make her drop it all before she could eat it.

Such a wonderful, exciting age.  This girl just brings such joy to our family.  What a blessing.

E is 8 months old!

These pictures are from a recent trip to visit Grandma and Grandpa S.  Grandpa S raked a nice pile of leaves so that E could enjoy a great Fall experience.  Her cousins, H & L, really helped her feel comfortable with the new experience.  L in particular was a great influence on her!  As you can see, they all had a fantastic time playing in the pile their grandpa raked for them!

So, on to the update: at 8 months old, E is a precocious little thing.  She’s mobile, chatty, friendly, cheerful, willful and stubborn, all at once.

E has developed a peculiar crawling technique that incorporates one bent knee (standard crawl style) and one straight knee (swung at the hip to the side), and is unlike any crawl I’ve seen before.  She uses this technique to great effect, however, and she’s a FAST little crawler!

She still loves to pull herself up into a standing position, and can shuffle from side to side while hanging on to something stable.  She also is able to walk if someone holds her upright.  Her balance is WAY off, though, so I think real walking is still a few months away.

She’s developing her consonant sounds now, and loves to babble.  She clearly says “Ma”, “Da” and “Ba” on a regular basis, though “Ma” is her current favorite (last week it was “Ba”).  Just this week she actually said “Ma-Mee”, though I know it wasn’t in reference to me.  Still, it was a thrill to hear!

E understands a lot of words, too, including her name, “open wide”, “let go” and “bye bye”.  I’m trying to teach her sign language, but something tells me that she’ll talk long before I’m able to really teach her any real signs!  We’re just not consistent enough with the signs to have an impact on her.  The ones I’m best about using are “drink”, “milk”, “eat”, “more” and “all done”.

E’s favorite toys are her blocks and mommy’s big wooden spoons.  She loves to hold the big spoons, and sometimes uses them as drumsticks, though really, that’s secondary to simply hanging on to them.  She actually will stack the blocks, which seems “advanced” to me.  I think that’s a normal thing for babies her age, though.  Perhaps it only seems advanced because I can’t believe she’s 8 months old already?

What a FUN Halloween! It was our first day back from Seattle (where I was working for 2 weeks, and E’s daddy was on 24-hour baby duty), and we barely made it out, but what fun we had when we did!

E was Tinkerbell, and as you will see from these pictures, she made a GREAT little Tink!   The hat isn’t part of the costume, but it was a cold day, so the warmth was needed.  I think it added a little something fun to the outfit, so it ended up in many of the photos.

E and her daddy, enjoying a brief moment before we head out to trick-or-treat.

Don’t you just want to eat her up?

Me & my E. My little fairy princess. LOVE her.

E and her grandpa. Don’t they look comfortable together? E really loves her grandparents!

We didn’t go to too many houses, since it was so chilly, but E charmed many of our neighbors, and we really did enjoy showing her off. Filling a small pail full of candy didn’t hurt, either!  I already can’t wait for next Halloween.  Wonder what she’ll be next year!?

Is it simply by virtue of having a child that your sense of time speeds up? I can’t believe that we have gone from recapping month 6 to recapping month 7 (very nearly month 8, really) already! Yet, here we are, 2-1/2 weeks past E’s 7 month birthday. It’s crazy, how fast she’s growing up!

My little girl seems to want to grow up in a hurry, even without the whole time speeding up thing. She moved from baby food to solid foods in the blink of an eye!  She now eats bits of chicken, wheat bread, Cheerios, apples, bananas, pears and tortillas, too!  And, because she’s a big girl now, she prefers to feed herself, rather than to be fed.  The good news is that expensive baby food is on the outs, and cheaper fresh food is IN!  The bad news is that she’s not a precisely tidy eater, so she produces a very messy dining area and an even messier baby, once she’s done eating!

E is also an accomplished sitter, crawler, kneeler, and stander.  She can pull herself up to a standing position and sit back down again without assistance.  She loves to play with her toys on her quilt, and finds great joy in learning a new trick (like banging things together to produce loud noises).

Because she’s so mobile, we are planning out how to babyproof the house.  Oh, yes, that does mean that we haven’t babyproofed yet.

We’re the world’s worst parents, I know.  But, but, but – we don’t let her out of our sight, and she’s not allowed to crawl anywhere unless strictly supervised.  I feel a bit bad about that, since she is SO curious and SO smart, and I think that she could do really well on her own, if only the house wasn’t a minefield for a baby her age.  There are so many things she could pull on top of herself, so many outlets she could electrocute herself with, so many blind cords she could hang herself on.  We have a lot of work ahead of us.

Help me out here!  What kinds of things did you babyproof that really didn’t need babyproofing?  What should you have babyproofed that you didn’t?

E is 6 months old (actually, she’s closer to 7 months, but since I’m so busy right now, it’s taken me a loooonnnng time to write this post, and we’re going to pretend she’s only 6 months old).

In the past month, E has learned how to crawl, sit unassisted, pull to a standing position, eat puffs, put her pacifier in her own mouth, and make consonant sounds.  Oh, yeah, and she learned how to drive, too.

Just kidding.  We only taught her how to park the car.

Anyway, she is doing everything she can to grow up in a hurry.  She crawls like a pro, now.  All coordinated-like.  I wrote in my last post that she started out fairly uncoordinated, but she’s picked it up in a hurry, and she really moves!  She’s sitting up all by herself now, too.  That just started this week – the day before she pulled herself up at daycare.  Oh, yes – she can pull herself into a standing position!  I haven’t seen her do it personally, but she does it regularly at daycare.  We don’t have anything she can pull herself up with at home, so we’re probably going to have to wait a while to see it ourselves.  But, at daycare, they swear she’s a pro at that – right from the start!

Compared to all that, eating fruits and vegetables seems like no big deal, but this time last month, she was only eating rice cereal!  Now, she can eat green beans, squash, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, peaches, applesauce, and pears.  Here are a few pics from one of her first baby food experiences.

Hilarious, right?  That FACE!  Those were green beans.  She LOVES them now.   They’re her favorite.  In fact, she likes all of the vegetables, and is only now getting used to the fruits.  She prefers veggies!  Yay!  Let’s hope she stays like this, so we don’t have to bribe her with ketchup, ranch dressing or cheese on every healthy thing.

E has also been introduced to the world of feeding yourself.  My sister, the experienced parent of two, asked me if E was eating puffs yet.  I told her that the books say she’s not old enough.  Experienced Mom laughed, and quickly bought E her first container of puffs.  I timidly gave her one, and she made a face much like the one above, as if to say “um, I don’t know what this is, and I don’t think I’m going to like it.”  And then she mushed it around a bit in her mouth, and when it was gone, she opened up for another!  And get this – she made the EXACT SAME FACE the next time, and the next time, and the time after that, and again and again…  But she kept “asking” for more.

She feeds herself puffs now, and she no longer makes the face, which is too bad, because it made me laugh each and every time.  I think that the puffs have helped her fine motor skills, too, because she’s also able to maneuver her pacifier back into her mouth with ease.  She’s been able to get it back near her mouth for over a month, but now she can actually twist it around so that it goes in the right way.

The most recent development is the addition of consonants to her sounds.  She now squeals, growls, grunts, howls, and makes “B” sounds.  It won’t be long before she is verbalizing her desires using real words, instead of just using The Force to make us do her bidding.

E has officially started to crawl.  Now, bear with me, here.  She’s not all coordinated yet, but she’s definitely crawling.  Her grandma tried to tell her that what she was doing WASN’T crawling, and here’s what she thought of that:

HA!  So THERE, grandma!

Anyway…  My little girl gets up on hands and knees, and thrusts her little legs out behind her, propelling her forward (and landing her on her face, most times).  She does this as many times as is necessary to get her wherever she wants to be, resulting in rug burns on her knees that make me wince.

Now, before you start thinking that I’m a bad mommy, letting my little baby rack up the miles on bloody knees, just know that these rug burns don’t bother E in the least.  Not even a little bit.  She just keeps right on scooting her way around, as though she was made of steel.

She has even started to crawl one limb at a time (you know, REAL crawling – oops, I’ve offended E again!).

Where was I?  Oh, yes – real crawling.  She’s putting one hand forward, one leg forward, rinse, repeat.  It’s great to watch.  Her grandpa even witnessed her pull the skirt of her dress out of the way because it was preventing forward motion.  What other almost-six-month-old does that?!?  The girls at daycare have suggested that E is a three-year-old trapped in a baby’s body.  I’m inclined to agree with them.  My wunderkind is definitely impressing me.

My sweet little E has been sent home from daycare a couple times in the past couple weeks for exhibiting symptoms of illness.  While I appreciate that the daycare workers are protecting the other babies in her “class”, both times, E has been fine.

The first time she was sent home was for a rash that had cropped up on her arms and legs.  I suspected that the rash was due to a reaction from unusual detergent (we had stayed with friends in Indiana the weekend prior).  We were required to take her to a doctor to determine if the rash was contagious, though.  Even the doctor thought the requirement was silly, given the mild appearance of the rash (no raised bumps), the absence of a fever, and the fact that she did not appear to be bothered by the rash at all.

Yesterday, she was sent home because the facility staff thought E had pink eye.  She had a puffy eye with goopy green discharge in the morning, but we took her to daycare anyway.  E’s daddy explained the sitch to E’s caretaker, and she was allowed to stay.  They monitored her eyes, and at some point decided that they’d wiped away too much gunk, and she had to go.

Here’s where I get a little peeved.  E’s eye was not red.  She was not rubbing it.  She wasn’t exhibiting any signs of pink eye, other than goopy green gunk (which I think is from a cold she caught AT DAYCARE).  But, we were required to come pick her up immediately and consult a doctor, AND E couldn’t return for at least 24 hours, unless seen by a doctor and cleared.  The doctor wouldn’t even see her because it didn’t sound like pink eye!

I’m trying to see this from both sides (they’re potentially protecting other kids by sending E home, and I’d be mad if they didn’t protect Little E from other sick kids), but it’s tough.  What qualifications do they have to diagnose pink eye?  Or decide that a rash looks bad enough to warrant a 24-hour ban?

For now, I’m just a bit frustrated.  My mom’s happy though.  She’s got a fun, funky baby to hang out with for the day.  Lucky grandma.

Five short months ago, my daughter joined the world.  Since then, I’ve learned that unless I’m extremely organized, I’m going to get beat by this whole mothering thing.  Something that no one tells you before you have kids: you get really stoopid (yep, that’s stoopid with 2 O’s) when you have a baby!

I chalk it up to being exhausted.  Exhausted people have not historically been known for their keen powers of thinking.  Where once I was a smart, thinking woman of a certain intelligence, I am now a quivering blob of amoebic goo.

Therefore, I have developed certain areas of no-thought-required organization to help me and E’s daddy care for her (yes, he’s been struck stoopid, too).  Take her diaper bags, for example.

Yes, that’s bags, plural – we have two diaper bags.  A big one for longer treks and a small one for quick jaunts.  I find that having two appropriately-sized organized bags is better than having one organized bag that doesn’t really fit every occasion.  (Experienced moms, check out the lists, and provide your suggestions for what I missed!)

“Small” Diaper Bag Contents

• 2-3 diapers – The rule of thumb is one diaper per hour you’re going to be out, plus an extra diaper.
• Baby wipes – I put a dozen or so into a ziploc baggie.
• 2 disposable changing pads – If your bag comes with a changing pad, you can skip these, but I find that they fold up nice and small, and they come in really handy.
• Travel size diaper cream
• Travel size sunscreen – If baby will be in the sun for any length of time, use sunscreen no matter what age baby is.  Most baby books recommend avoiding sunscreen/sun for the first 4-6 months, but that’s not always practical, and our pediatrician has told us that it’s better to use sunscreen than for Miss E to get a sunburn.
• Burp cloth
• Extra outfit – I put the spare outfit into a quart-sized ziploc bag.  I squish out all the extra air, and it makes the outfit quite compact.  It also provides a tidy container for the original outfit when it becomes unfit for wear.
• Extra pacifiers – We carry a half-dozen extras with us at all times.  E is an accomplished paci-shooter (she can spit those things halfway across town!), so we come prepared.
• Hand sanitizer – I love the foaming sanitizer from Bath & Body Works.  I think they’re a tidier way to sanitize than the gels.  I always end up with a glob of gel on my shirt, pants, car seat…  The foaming sanitizer doesn’t seem to do that.
• Travel pack of disinfecting wipes – Clorox, Lysol, etc.  Take your pick.  I use them to wipe down everything from the toys and book, to handles on shopping carts and the changing tables in public bathrooms (yuck!).  I also use them to clean off my hands after pumping gas.
• Purse pack of tissues – I prefer to use tissues rather than the nose-sucker-outer thingie when we’re out.
• Bib/Bottle – I DO NOT include these because I only use the small bag for quick trips between feedings.  Anything scheduled over a feeding gets the big bag.

“Big” Diaper Bag Contents

• 6-8 diapers - Use a permanent marker to write the size of the diaper on the waistband (baby outgrows diapers faster than you think, and the last thing you need is a too-small diaper in an emergency!).  Since you’ll probably not use this bag as often, be sure to check the size of the diapers in the bag before you head out the door!
• Baby wipes – Don’t skimp on these – carry lots!  Pampers has a nice, small, hard-sided wipes container for travel.  I’ve refilled the container with bulk wipes since the original purchase, and it’s worked like a charm.  Huggies has a travel size packet of wipes available, too, and you get more wipes for your money, but it’s not refillable.
• Changing Pad – The bag we bought came with one.  It’s got a nylon side and a plastic side.  The plastic side goes face-up (easier to wipe down when you get baby poop on it).
• Travel size diaper cream
• Travel size petroleum jelly or Aquaphor
• Travel size sunscreen – Again, if baby will be in the sun for any length of time, use sunscreen no matter what age baby is.
• 2 burp cloths
• 2 outfits – One just never seems to be enough!
• 1 nylon/waterproof bib, or 1 cloth bib per meal – E is a messy bottle drinker, so we bring one cloth bib per bottle for her.
• Extra pacifiers – Amy Cole makes a pacifier case that I can cram 4-6 pacifiers into, and it hangs on the outside of the diaper bag for fast, easy access.
• Hand sanitizer
• Toy – I have a rattle and a soft toy with crinkly parts for E.
• Book – We carry a tiny book with cardboard pages (a $1 Peter Rabbit book from Target).  She actually doesn’t like us to read it to her – she just wants us to give it to her so she can chew on it!!
• Travel pack of disinfecting wipes – I don’t leave home without them.
• Band-Aids – They’re not just for baby – you never know when you’re going to need one!
• Infant Tylenol
• Advil – For Mom.  Period.
• Purse pack of tissues
• 1-2 pre-filled bottles – My rule is one bottle per 3 hours.  Whether you’re breastfeeding or formula feeding (we do a combination of both these days), you may find it easier to use bottles when you’re out and about (fill them with whatever you’re feeding your little one).  It’s one more thing to carry, but you can feed baby without pulling your shirt half off in public, which is nice.

A bit more advice for ya…
Keep a stash of diaper bag supplies at home.  When you find travel sizes on sale, stock up.  I buy travel sizes of hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes in obscenely large quantities when they go on sale.
AND
Check the diaper bags periodically to make sure that they’re well stocked.  The only thing worse than having too-small diapers is not having ANY!

Now, a question for the experienced moms out there - what am I missing?  What are your must-haves?

Thanks, Aunt Pat for this quilt!

My E is now 5 months old.  Last month I commented that I couldn’t believe she was already 4 months old, and *poof* we’re here at month 5!

She is a force to be reckoned with now.  She eats rice cereal for breakfast every morning.  She has positively mastered the flip-over (and her favorite place to do it is on the changing table – GASP!).  She even gets up on her hands and knees!  Though, to be fully honest, she’s only done that a couple times, and if she wants to go anywhere, she still scoots around on her face (she pushes with her feet, and uses her face where other babies use their hands).

We can tell that her brain is developing, too.  She is able to remember things that she has done in certain areas of the house. Her daddy takes her out on the screen porch, and she remembers that there is a wind chime out there that she likes.

She loves to watch her dogs run around the house – she’ll squeal and kick her feet, waving her arms around wildly (so, so cute). She gets a kick out of her cat when he deigns to show himself, too, though he doesn’t elicit such a fantastic response as the dogs.

E recently had a little photo shoot in the backyard for her daddy. He needed some pics of infants in nature, and we used E as a subject. We had no idea she’d be such a WILLING subject. The pictures came out really well, I think.

<– I love this one in particular.  The concentration on her face while she reaches out for a flower she’s already holding is just precious.

It’s as if she’s saying “I just KNOW I can grab that pretty flower”, not realizing that she already has it!

It’s similar to the face she has in the picture with the bouquet (below) – such excitement over the new textures, colors and smells!

We still haven’t caught any photos of her latest trick – blowing raspberries.  Sticking her tongue out and everything! She sprays the universe with saliva while doing it, but it’s SO worth it. Too fun! I’ll post one when we finally catch it. Oh, and I have a couple GREAT pics of her making funny faces. I’ll have to put those up in a fun post soon.

E is a good baby. Active, happy, cheerful, sweet. Really, really good. And I’m exhausted. All the time.

What must mothers of less cheerful babies feel like? Or moms of multiples? I mean, REALLY!?!!?

E let me take a nice, long nap over the weekend, so I was relatively awake for part of the weekend. But, come Monday, my brain was mush again.

So, how do you do it?  How do you function on a level above zombie?  Because I’m having no luck.  Seriously exhausted, brain numbed, getting dumber by the moment.  Soon I’ll be drooling into my Jello.  Help!