Day 50 - February 19

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 7^th 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!