Kaitlyn: Month Seven

Our Precious Boo Bear,

I cannot believe how fast time has been passing by. It seems like we were just meeting you for the first time last week. You have grown and changed so much in this past month. Your personality is getting bigger by the day and you are definitely the sunshine in our lives.

This past month, we introduced you to solids, and what an adventure that has been. The first time, you cried when we put you in your high chair, and you spit almost all of your cereal back out at us. Now you are excited to eat, and actually open your mouth for more food. However, when you are all done, you lock your jaw and turn your mouth from side to side to avoid your spoon. I think your favorite food so far has been carrots, although I want to reintroduce more of the foods we gave you initially to see how you respond to them now.

You are now eating 20-24 ounces of breast milk a day. It is hard to say exactly how many times a day you are eating. Sometimes you drink half a bottle, other times you drink a bottle and a half or two bottles of milk at a time. We make you six 4 oz bottles for the day, and you usually have 1-2 oz left over at the end of the day. You are also eating about a jar to a jar and a half of baby food a day. You are still eating the baby's "first" foods, although I have a feeling you will be moving on to the "2's" soon. 

With all your eating and growing, you are now wearing bigger clothes. Some of your clothes are 6-9 months and some are 6-12 months, it just depends on the brand and their sizing. Your little thighs are getting so chunky and they are absolutely precious!! :o)

We also had to put you in your medium diapers (size 3 for disposable use) and adjust all of your one size diapers up a notch. Mommy is excited that she got to order more fluffy mail!! You have lots of cute new colors of diapers to wear, including polka dots, leopard print, and bold blues, pinks and purple!

We took our first out of town trip as a family this month, too. We went to Lake LBJ after the fourth of July to spend some time with your godfather, TJ, and Aunt Lindsay. You had so much fun being spoiled all weekend!! You did so well being on the boat; you loved the wind and water on you, but you weren't too sure about your life jacket unless you were being held. Uncle TJ even blew up the kid's pool for you and you had so much fun splashing at the Lake House. I can't wait to see you and Daddy tubing at the lake when you get bigger! 

You are still our little snuggle bunny, but only when you are asleep! You are now a baby on the move! Between rolling, sitting, standing up and crawling some, you are able to get almost any place that interests you. This is definitely keeping us (and daddy especially) on our toes. You tried to attack daddy's XBOX the other day and he almost had a heart attack. lol!

As usual, you are meeting (and exceeding!) all of your milestones. Some of the things that you are now able to do:

-Sit without support

-Drag objects near you

-Lung forward on your hands and knees and take a few steps crawling

-Jabber (you like to babble and screams excitement, although when you are learning something new, you focus very intently and do not make noise)

-Experience Stranger Anxiety (oh goodness, this has been interesting)

-Stand while holding onto something

-Bang objects together

-Pull self to standing (this is an 8 month skill)

We love you so very much, Kaitlyn, and are extremely proud to be your mommy and daddy. God has blessed us tremendously with you as a daughter and we cannot wait to see what you learn and accomplish in this next month.

Love,
Mommy

"How Old Are You?"

Preview of Seven Month Photoshoot

As the months go by, these are becoming more and more interesting. :o) Katie is able to "participate" much more than before. I will publish her seven month update tomorrow, but I had to take her pictures this evening because I am working tomorrow. Enjoy!

Kaitlyn Can Stand!!!

Eating Solids, It's been an adventure

I am sure most of you will have a hard time believing this, but our daughter is pretty stubborn. Feeding her has become quite the challenge and usually involves lots of silly faces and entertaining her enough until she opens her mouth and we can get some food in.

Happy Fourth of July

I am late in posting this, so I am just going to show you our weekend in pictures. We celebrated at the Hyatt Hill Country with my family and had such a great time!

Katie is ready to celebrate!

Daddy and Katie ready to hit the pool

Katie and Daddy getting in the water

Floating the river with Mommy

Hi Mom and Dad!!!

Paul and I

Napping by the pool with Grandma!

Mom and Papa

Paul, Katie and Me

Paul and our godson, Andrew

Grandpa and Katie waiting on the Fireworks

All tuckered out!

We hope that everyone had a wonderful and relaxing Fourth of July!

Kaitlyn's First Haircut

Today, my mom needed to get her hair cut, and we thought we would ask Miss Janet if she would be able to trim Katie's hair while we were there. It's about four inches long already and her "bangs" are in her eyes. She doesn't really have a "hairstyle" at this point as her hair is long in patches and growing back in others. She has very long bangs though, and a couple of "wisps" of long hair in the back.

Janet was able to trim up her bangs and "soften" the wisps in the back. Katie did fairly well. She didn't quite know what Janet was up to, but she enjoyed playing with Janet's necklace and she certainly liked all the attention! :o) She looks so cute!!!

Before

Playing with a comb

Playing with the sparkly necklace

Katie with Miss Janet!

Pretty Half Birthday Girl!

Kaitlyn: Month Six

My Precious Baby Girl,

I didn't know that it was possible to love you anymore than I already do, but each morning when you wake up and I look into your pretty brown eyes, I fall more and more in love with you. I can't believe that you have already been with us for half a year. It seemed like it took forever for you to finally make your appearance, and these last six months have just flown by. We are so amazed and captivated by you and all the things that you are learning to do.

You are bursting at the seams with personality. You are learning new things all the time, and you love to repeat your new tricks over and over. :o) This month, you have learned the fine art of "shrieking" your happiness. You have learned how to stick your tongue way out and spit everywhere. You now know that you can change the octave of your voice in a variety of ways and you know that you make a "uh uh uh uh uh" noise when moaning/crying/"talking" while someone pats your back. Sometimes you like to "help" make the pitch change in your voice. You are too cute!

You are definitely recognizing the people in your life, and it is so rewarding to come home from a long day at work and see your beautiful face light up with a smile for mommy. (or daddy, grandma, grandpa, uncle Jon, etc.)

You are so mobile these days. I thought for sure you would be crawling by six months, but you are almost there. You can get yourself on all fours and you rock back and forth, but you have yet to start moving your knees forward. You are getting really good at pushing yourself backwards though. :o) You love to roll, and no one can trust you to stay put anywhere these days. In fact, it is incredible difficult to change you as you try to roll off the changing table as soon as we put you down. You roll from your back to your stomach, push yourself up on all fours, sit down in the tripod sit and topple onto you back. Wash, rinse, repeat. You are very happy doing this for 15-30 minutes at a time!

You are still a fabulous sleeper and snuggler. We are definitely blessed in this department. You sleep about 12 hours at night now. You go to bed around 9:30 to 10:30 and sleep anywhere from 7:00 to 08:30. Usually you wake up, eat some more and then sleep for another 2-3 hours. Naps are another story....sometimes you take 2-3 2 hour naps, and sometimes you hardly nap at all. Those latter days are a lot harder for everyone because you are sooo tired!

You are meeting your milestones very well, too. You roll in both directions, turn towards sounds and voices, you try to imitate our sounds (and faces), you sit without support momentarily, you mouth objects (and hands, clothes, chins, noses, etc), you try to lunge forward but no "official" crawling yet, and you drag objects towards yourself.

You are drinking anywhere from 20 to 27 oz this month, with an average of 24 oz a day. You usually eat 6 bottles of 4 oz, but occasionally, you will take more at a time. Mommy finally started packing up your 3-6 month clothes today. I think that you are going to need to start wearing your 6-12 month clothes more. Your dresses are looking like shirts with bloomers and your pants are getting tighter on the waist and looking like capri's or daisy dukes for your shorts. Daddy says those are a "no-no."

You are definitely becoming quite the big girl, Katie Bug! We are so blessed that we have you in our lives. I cannot image my life without you in it. You are our sunshine, baby girl, and we love you so very, very much.

Happy Half Year Birthday, Lovebug!

Love,

Mommy

First Solids: Rice Cereal

We fed Kaitlyn her first cereal today. I have been waiting to start her on solids based on the current recommendations by the AAP of six months exclusive breastfeeding. And, I am happy to say that we met that milestone!! Woohoo!!! (Most know this has been challenging for us).

She has been showing signs that she is ready for solids for a couple of weeks now:

*She sits upright

*Can support her head upright

*"Mouths objects"

*Watches us eat

*Mimics our eating

*Tries to eat/drink all of our food...

Some of this has been rather interesting, like say when she wants to share Uncle Jon's glass of wine.

Gimme that Uncle Jon!

Don't worry, we didn't actually let her drink any.

And she was rather determined to help Grandpa eat his birthday cake.

That is until Daddy came along and took all the frosting off her hands. She didn't like that part very much.

So tonight when I got home from work, we decided to make her some cereal. Everyone was there to see how the Doodlebug did, and I am happy to report she got about half of the cereal actually in her mouth!

Ready for Dinner!

I want the MILK!

She didn't like eating in the high chair at first, so I had to hold her....

Then Grandma was able to get her to eat some; she wanted to help.

Grandma and Katie

She got a bunch of it on her face and bib.

My turn!

Daddy started off feeding her, and then took another turn at the end. By this point she was done eating and she knows that Daddy is a sucker for her alligator tears! :o)
Our little girl is growing up!