Why does 7 months feel like such a big number? I guess it’s because it means we’ve more than halfway to one. ONE!

The blog has been very baby-centric lately. I would say it would change soon, but I can’t make that promise. I’m just going to keep going with posting whatever and however I feel. I’m in my last week of Best Body Bootcamp (my second round) and I’ll be signing up for the next round. I can’t wait!

What’s new this month? 

• Rocking on all 4s.
• Planking.
• Trying to move forward. She does mountain climbers and occasionally moves an arm forward. I think she’ll be crawling forward (at least somewhat) in a couple weeks.
• Eating more foods.
• Saying dada all day long. Also says “ya”, hay”, “ca”, “hi” <– what sounds like hi
• Pulls up to stand. She hasn’t tried this anywhere else besides her crib yet. If she sits in front of you she will hold onto your hands and pull herself up. (We lowered her crib a couple weeks ago.)
• Swim class! She LOVED it the first week. Liked it the second week. She loves to kick her feet like a froggy.
• She waves. I know this sounds ridiculous. I didn’t admit she was waving until last week when my friend finally convinced me. She does this open hand sideways/upside down wave. It’s hysterical.
• She claps like crazy and is super proud of it.
• Olivia loves watching cars go by, sitting on our stoop, watching kids.
• She LOVES her little Radioflyer wagon. We go for walks in it usually once a day.

Solids/Foods:

In the past 2 weeks this has gotten a lot better. Liv has tried a lot more food and is open to trying foods with texture now. She has tried a lot more food since last month, including turkey, chicken and salmon. All of which she liked. She also had homemade pizza (cheeseless because I was nervous about choking) and went crazy for it. I also have added back in oatmeal and mix it with some Stonyfield baby yogurt. I usually give her 1/3 of a container and mix that with oatmeal and carrots. She’s also tried zucchini, eggplant, blueberries, butternut squash and more but I can’t think. I usually will give her pieces of whatever we are eating and then some purees. We attempt 3 meals a day. Breakfast and lunch are usually better than dinner. I also bought Happy Baby puffs. She has just started to really get the hang of picking them up and getting them to her mouth. I’ll put out 8-10 and maybe 4 will make it in her mouth. Some get in her mouth and come back out too. If we’re out during lunch I’ll bring a pouch with me. I buy whatever organic ones are on sale or I’ll bring my own reusable pouch (review coming soon!).

Clothes:

She’s in mostly all 6-12 but can still fit into some 3-6 onesies and pants from the Gap.

Sleep:

Read about our sleep training saga part 1 and part 2. We’re still getting up usually once a night for feedings. She still takes between 2-3 naps a day depending on what time she wakes up and the length of her naps. Her bedtime is between 6:30-7 depending on when she wakes from her last nap.

Stats:

We don’t go to the doctor until 9 months! I always forget to update her height and weight, so at 6 months she was 15.12 pounds and 26 3/4 inches. Not sure what she is now.

Things that amaze me:

I’ve been thinking a lot about those first few months. When I was really in the thick of it in the first few months I was going through the routine. I was happy and overjoyed but a lot of the time it was almost boring. I am SO grateful I had a pretty easy and predictable baby. But the social interaction is so limited when you first have a baby. I don’t think I really realized it until this past month. It almost feels like foggy? Does that make sense? I wouldn’t say I really experienced too much sadness..maybe some days here or there but nothing consistent. But I would say not looking back I don’t really know how I got through the day to day monotony. I don’t even know if I’m making sense, but I figured I’d put it out there in case any moms at home are like when does this end? I would say 4 months when Liv started to really show personality and interacted more is when life started to get more interesting.

I don’t want to make it seem like it wasn’t wonderful, because it was. I really enjoyed my little baby. I’m just saying that when Olivia got a little older and could play a little more it was more fun. Now she laughs and “chats” and plays. We talk and sing and explore. And don’t get me wrong…we still have tough days too but they are fewer and farther between. And sometimes they aren’t so much rough days as in rough hours.

Check out Liv in the water:

I think that’s all for this month! If I think of anything else I’ll update it!

Here we are at part 2.  If you missed it, part 1 is here.

Let me just be clear about a few things:

• No one WANTS to do cry it out. You don’t want to make your baby cry to sleep. It’s sad and heart breaking. But for us, it was the only option left. I love sleep and I love my husband. In order to be good parents we need sleep and we need time together. I also need to be a happy mama…which also goes back to sleep. I need it. And all of that is second to the fact that Olivia needs sleep to develop and grow. She was not getting good sleep when she was up every 20 minutes for hours.
• We were at our breaking point, which led to us being fully committed. We were on the same page. There was NO backing out.
• At this point, she was still napping in a non-moving swing. She goes in completely awake and falls asleep on her own.
• She was a couple days over 6 months. (She turned 6 months on Saturday and we started 4 days later.)
• We were NOT doing this to wean her from her overnight feeding. We would still feed her when she got up once a night, but no more. We decided to feed her around her usual time and any other wake ups, we’d let her cry.

I was honestly afraid she would cry and cry and never fall asleep. I have a very stubborn, smart baby. I had read about all these stories how babies get it in 3-4 nights. But I have a friend who’s baby is 5 months older than her and they are very similar. It took them awhile for him to 100% get it and that’s what I expected.

So we prepared for the first night. We did our bedtime routine (bath, book & bottle, prayers) and then we placed her in the crib. We said to her “okay it’s time for bed now. We love you. Have a good sleep.”  (I have always said this to her when I put her down for naps. Why? I have no clue…I just started it and kind of like it.)

We went downstairs and I made a cup of tea. Danny said he would stay on the first floor and clean up from dinner so I could go in the basement and distract myself with Chicago Fire for the first night. He took the monitor. We decided he wouldn’t come downstairs until she fell asleep. This was basically for me because I had a stomachache about this and didn’t even want to see the monitor.

Okay, so here are my notes…(I’m sharing this because I felt it was SO helpful to read other mom’s accounts of what happened.)

4/24

4/25

4/26

4/27

4/28

4/29

4/30

Thoughts looking back:

• I was right in saying our child wouldn’t be one to just get it in 4 days and be done. She’s smart and stubborn and it took awhile for her. I would say it took about a week to be SO SO SO much better. Now we’re in a good grove, but she still has her nights that are off. (She was up 2x last night and up from 3:30-6 wide awake.)
• It did get better each night except the night we had to abandon it. I tried to focus on the big picture in that one night wasn’t going to ruin everything. It took A LOT of talking with mom friends to realize this. I was really upset about it.
• CIO is REALLY hard, but it works. Most babies don’t take this long to get it.
• We transitioned to naps in the crib about 2 weeks after we started CIO. The transition wasn’t really a big deal. She got it quickly, but did much better when it was just me during the week. She’s not really a fan of napping on the weekends when Dan is home.
• Doing this was good for Olivia and good for us. We are all sleeping better.
• I spent a couple of nights downstairs in the guest room with a pillow over my head and a podcast blasting. It didn’t really help because I felt like my mommy hearing still could hear Liv.
• Every morning when I’d go in and get Liv she was perfectly happy, laughing and smiling. This was important because it showed she was happy and didn’t get mad at the night before.

If you automatically have a great sleeper, props to you. It seems like many blog mamas do and I’m insanely jealous. Eventually we will wean her off of the nighttime bottle, but I’m going to wait until she is eating more solids. I’ll probably start decreasing it at 7.5 months or so.

Thanks for reading. Obviously this is a very personal topic and you have to do what’s right for your baby and your family. I’m only sharing my experiences because I want to give hope to parents who feel like they will never sleep again!

I’ve been staring at a blank screen for umm…30 minutes now. I have owed you all an updated post on sleep and where we are. I wrote a post on the 4 month sleep regression and two other posts on sleep (part 1 & part 2) and what we were doing to get her in the crib and help her fall asleep on her own. I get emails weekly from mom’s who are struggling with sleep with their little one. Most of them are regarding my 4 month sleep regression post and they want extra hope that it’s better now.

Good news is, it’s better now. It’s WAY better now. The bad news…that really no one wants to hear is…we did sleep training. Yes, we did cry it out.

Let me explain…

When I was pregnant/before we were ready to have kids, we had talked about sleep training & cry it out. Danny and I were both on board with it. We both felt that we would need to teach our baby how to sleep well. It was just something we assumed we’d have to do. I can remember babysitting while the parents were doing cry it out and the mom told me to just let him cry till he falls asleep. I remember standing by the steps listening for awhile, and then the baby fell asleep. Cool, I thought in my teenager, non-parent head.

Then I had Olivia and I couldn’t even imagine having her “cry it out”. Then she was a good napper and not a good night sleeper. Then she did okay. Then she regressed. Then she only got up once. Then she got up 13094098 times. Then she slept okay. Then she didn’t. AND ON AND ON AND ON OVER AND OVER AND OVER.

She would go through a phase where she would only get up once. Then it would be twice. Then occasionally she would wake up every hour. Then sometimes she would come in bed with us. We had this great plan where we’d teach her to fall asleep because that is how you get your baby to self soothe. (I of course consulted my favorite baby site, Troublesome Tots.) And it worked! Until it didn’t and we were back to where we were. This is making my head hurt reliving this.

We went on like this always knowing that CIO (cry it out) was in the back of my mind. I (of course )read “Cry it out when and why?” and “Are you ready for cry it out?”  We were major yes to numbers 1-6. We didn’t have any problems with 9 & 10…but I just wasn’t really ready. We had tried it before a little bit, doing the checks and she NEVER fell asleep after over an hour. In hind sight, I wasn’t fully committed then because we tried it only for 3 days and stopped.

So how did we get to the point where we started? Well okay. It was taking LONGER and LONGER to put Liv to sleep. It was getting to be over an hour. Danny and I barely got to see each other because he would be rocking her for over an hour. Then she would wake up so much and we’d have to start over. The breaking point was two nights in a row where she got up every 20 minutes for 4 hours. We finally put her in bed with us and then decided the next night we would start. I happened to have my pediatrician apt that day, so I asked her about it and she 100% supported it.

Basically, there are two ways to do CIO…with checks (where you go in after a certain amount of time) and without checks. With the checks you just check on them and comfort them with your voice. Without them you just leave the baby to cry until they fall asleep. You have to KNOW your baby and what’s right for him/her. For us, it was no checks. This is because when we had done it in the past it made it worse. She would see Danny or myself and be more pissed that we weren’t picking her up. We felt it would actually prolong the crying.

I’m going to stop here because this is already a novel. I’m going to try really hard get the rest of this up this week because I know many of you want to read it.

But I will tell you that the outcome is a LOT better. We are sleeping a lot better now and overall feel MUCH more rested!

Update: Part 2 is here! 

I’ve been meaning to do a “day in the life” post for um…6 months now.[Update...I started this after she turned 6 months. She's now over 6.5 months...]

Things change all the time with babies. When Liv was a newborn I’d get up with her around 5 or 5:30 and hang out in my room with her and drink coffee. She would go back to sleep after only an hour then, so I’d put her in the rock n’play and then get some work done. I usually worked out during her second nap then. I would even put her in her rock n’play right next to the treadmill because I was so nervous to leave her anywhere else for the first 2-3 months.

Now life is very different from then.

It amazes me on a daily basis how much babies develop in 6 months. They basically go from little blobs to animated people who can basically communicate. [That's a very scientific definition of development.] I’m also amazed everyday how much goes on. Olivia now claps her hands, can move (on her belly), go from sitting up to her belly, and waves (okay not really, but she makes a waving motion.) 

Anyway, going back to day in the life…

Our day starts from anywhere from 6 to (the VERY rare) 7. Yesterday, it was 6 on the dot. Today she got up at 4:50, we let her fuss it out for an hour seeing if she’d go back to sleep (she didn’t), fed her and now she’s snoozing again.

Right after she gets up she gets a diaper change & then a bottle. We go downstairs and we hang out. Then we do tummy time and she goes all over on her blanket. She’s moving like crazy and just got up onto all 4s for the first time yesterday. She even hiked her hips way up like a downdog. That was pretty impressive, but only happened once. I put toys out all around her and we play for about an hour.

After about 60-75 minutes of playing we attempt breakfast. She’s not very excited about food right now. I put a large piece of banana and a baby pancake in front of her and she picks it up and sucks on it for a second or two. Some days it’s more, some less. I also attempt to give her some broccoli puree mixed with (unsweetened) applesauce. She doesn’t mind this and eats a decent amount of it. Liv’s also obsessed with her straw water cup. She will grab it and take sips from it.

Breakfast is over and I get her cleaned up and changed. Food time = outfit changes because it’s such a mess. I will admit I do not really currently like meal times. She is so hit or miss with foods (I know this is normal) that it’s so much work. I do it obviously, but I don’t love it. We alternate between different foods and I usually give her something from what I’m eating. (I eat breakfast now too.)

We play for a little bit and when it hits 2 hours awake time (this was 8 yesterday because of an early wake up) I bring her up for a nap. I give her a kiss, turn her music on and tell her it’s nap time and I’ll see her soon. I put her in her crib and shut the door. She *typically* falls asleep quickly. Yesterday she slept for 1 hour, 45 minutes.

While she’s napping, I quickly change and head downstairs for a 4 mile interval run and core work. After I’m done I stretch, shower and get dressed. I sit down at the computer and she wakes up.

We basically start over with diaper, bottle, playtime, (diaper explosion), meals. For this playtime she will mostly sit up and play. We also play with her little motorcycle and in the bouncer. I put her in the jumparoo/bouncer and make lunch for me because I’m starving and can’t wait any longer. After I eat, I feed her. I do sweet potatoes mixed with avocado and give her a piece of chicken that’s leftover. She eats a decent amount again and we get cleaned up (and do an outfit change…again. Yes I do use a bib.)

It’s 11:45 by the time we’re done and she’s sleepy. I bring her back upstairs for her nap. She fusses/whimpers for 15 minutes and then falls asleep until 2. This time, while she naps, I clean up and do Blissful Eats and blog work. I get a nice chunk of time to get work done by 2 when she wakes. I get her, do diaper, bottle and I have a snack of chobani, fruit and almond butter. I get her water cup, put sunscreen on her and we go for a car ride to the park. By the time we get to the park it’s just about 2:45.

I put her in the swing for about 20 minutes and then we take alittle walk around the park watching all the kids. By this time she is starting to get fussy so she gets her 4 o clock bottle. (She generally eats every 4 hours during the day, but she always has a 4 o’clock bottle.) She starts to doze off, but then wakes up after 5 minutes (thank goodness, because it would have messed with her sleep!) We hang out and just enjoy the outside in 4:10-4:15 and then we get back in the car and leave.

(recycled pic. not from yesterday)

We get back to our house and go back to playing. At 4:30, we do our daily facetime with Danny on the train to see how his day was. I take a million pics a day..like this one. (Another new thing is she gives “kisses”. Not on demand, but she’ll pull your face to hers and do this. She probably is just trying to chew on my cheek…but I say it’s kisses.)

At 4:45 we go outside in her Radio Flyer wagon and go back and forth in front of the house. Dan comes home and he takes her for a spin. My mom and stepdad are coming home from work, so they stop by to say hi.

5:15 and it’s Liv’s (and our) dinner time. Most nights we eat at 6, but since she’s been up since 2 so we eat early. She isn’t really interested in eating, but took some bites of sweet potato puree plus left over carrots/applesauce. She’s really tired so Danny gives her a bath while I have a breather on the couch, check twitter, answer emails and get a little more work done. She gets her nighttime bottle at 6:30 (this is usually at 7) and is ready for bed by 6:45. We read a book and say prayers and then Danny puts her in her crib. After Olivia goes down, we clean up from dinner and whenever we’re done watch some tv.

I was tired from being up so early, so we head to bed at 9. Liv wakes up at 12:30, eats and goes back to sleep until 4:50, eats and now is still sleeping. (RARE!!)

So that was our day yesterday. Typically I plan for something to do everyday. Monday we went into the city with friends, today we have a Gymboree class, but yesterday since we didn’t have anything it was a bit boring. Days go much faster for me when we have plans, which is why I schedule 1-2 things a day, most days. Yesterday was nice though because it was beautiful out so we enjoyed the park. I do mostly schedule things around nap times, but Liv is pretty flexible and will sleep in the car.

If you’re still reading..WOW. Every single day is different with kids, but this is generally how it flows for us. Some days I have more to do, some days are pretty relaxed, like this one.

So is this more boring that you thought? haha. Hopefully I’ll remember to do one of these at about a year when she’s really moving.

What’s the most exciting part of your day? I’d say it’s taking her on different adventures. I love taking her to the swings and watch her watch the kids.

Hardest part: The hour before Danny gets home. It always drags!