The pictures are from the 19th... the post is from the 20th. I need to make a note of that for myself because of some of the stuff in the post.
Another month, another post about Cate’s world. I’m pretty
sure no one cares about these posts as much as I do, but I love that I’ll have
this record of her first year, month by month. I’m really not that good at
keeping up with the baby calendar (we don’t even have a whole book, just a
calendar and I can’t seem to manage it!), so this is perfect.
So what’s going on in Cate’s world? Well, as of two days
after turning 7 months, she is rolling again! She seriously hasn’t done it
since right after she turned 3 months. The irony of it is that Jason was gone
when she rolled for the first time. And Jason is gone now, too. I’m happy she’s
getting it, though. At her 6 month well-baby visit, the doctor said, “So she’s
rolling both ways?” and I had to say no! Of course, the reason she wasn’t is
because she spends no time on her belly or her back anymore. She only ever sits
upright if she’s playing on the floor. So I’ve been forcing the issue a little
more, mostly by not picking her up immediately when she falls over reaching for
a toy. It seems to have worked. She falls forward, ends up on her belly, and
then rolls over onto her back. She’s close to going the other way, too, mostly
if there’s something good to chase after just over her head. That’s about it in
the area of locomotion. Just like her big sister, it doesn’t appear as though
she’s in any hurry to learn how to crawl – Michaela was 9.5 months old when she
finally crawled… I’m not holding out hope we’ll get there any earlier with
Cate.
One area in which she’s completely different from Michaela
is food. By 7 months, Michaela was eating a lot of different things. I don’t
think she liked anything with texture right at 7 months, but I know that,
shortly after that, she was eating beans, pasta, etc. She also was eating
yogurt pretty much every day, and trying bits of whatever we were eating. Cate,
on the other hand, has finally swallowed some steamed carrots and some avocado.
That’s it. She’s an expert nurser, though, and can eat a full “meal” in less
than five minutes now. Sometimes I wonder if she’s getting enough when she’s
that quick, but she’ll still wait anywhere from two and a half to three hours
to make it known that she’d like some more, usually by grinning a huge grin at
me when I sign and ask her if she wants milk, and sometimes by wiggling with
anticipation as well. We’ll get around to the solid foods eventually…
On the sleeping front, things haven’t changed much, except that Cate’s daytime
naps have fallen into a routine. And, blessedly, the afternoon one almost
always coincides with a good portion of Michaela’s nap, too. It’s WONDERFUL.
Now if I could just get her to nap in a place that is not the swing in the
middle of the living room, the naps might last as long as they need to as well.
She’s still sleeping well at night, and we can pretty much guarantee one 5-6
hour stretch. If we plan it right, it’s even in the best 5-6 hours for us.
The only other new development in her 7th month is that Cate is just
developing more of an awareness of EVERYthing around her. She sees things she
wants and dives for them (thus the need to learn how to roll over better –
which she has now done from back to front since I started typing this earlier
today), most notably remote controls, cellphones, iPads, and anything else we
don’t want her to have; recognizes Daddy as soon as he walks in the door and
gets mad if he doesn’t come over and say hi immediately; follows Michaela
around with her eyes as Michaela runs through and around rooms; and you’d think
her head was on a swivel with how she tries to see everything around her at the
store when I have her in the Beco as I’m doing my grocery shopping – she’s
going to get whiplash one of these days.
I almost forgot… the poor baby marked turning 7 months old
by getting the worst cold I’ve even seen in a baby before. So we gave the
makers of Hyland’s products pretty much all the money we could and found that
both their baby cold tablets and their baby cough syrup work really well. But
mostly cuddles and sleeping upright were the best remedies. Thankfully Jason
was home for that fun so he could take the “sleeping upright in a chair” shifts
at night. I hope that’s the last one of those we see in a loooong time.
That’s Cate as she turns 7 months old. I say it every month,
but I don’t know how 7 months have gone by already. My little baby is forming
her own little personality, making a stink when she doesn’t get her way,
learning how to do new things every day, and stealing another piece of my heart
every single day. I’m so lucky to be her mommy!
