7 months, 5 days

 

As you can see by the photo, Kerala loves to chew on everything. We thought her chewing was under control, but on Friday night she proved us wrong by biting off a piece of one of her board books. Fortunately, Troy was able to get it out of her mouth, but it was pretty scary. Sleeping seems to be getting much better. The last two nights she went down pretty easily. Last night I put her to bed with her still be slightly awake and she fell to sleep without a fuss. Tonight she cried for about a minute after I put her down and then went right to sleep. One thing that we have changed is that we have put something in her crib that smells like me. The first night it was a t-shirt. When Troy and I went to check on her she was sleeping hugging the shirt. When we checked on her again, however, she had the shirt covering her face which made me a bit nervous so we took it out. Now she sleeps with a burp cloth that I slept with a couple of nights. I don't know if it makes any difference at all, but I am hoping it does.

Kerala is progressing quite well on the crawling front. She seems to be getting up on a all fours a bit more consistenly rather than just army crawling. She is getting quite good at making a beeline for things that you don't want her to get. We definitely have to watch her!

7 months

 

As you can tell by the blogged photo, we have a bit of baby proofing to do. Kerala is now quite the master at army crawling and was super excited to check out the blue light on Troy's computer. Fortunately, she isn't the fastest crawler, but we won't have long before her crawling is out of control.

Lately sleep has been somewhat of a problem for Kerala. At night she refuses to go down and it's quite a battle. I have been rocking her to sleep, but now she even gets really squirmy with me rocking her and it now takes about 45 minutes to get her to go to sleep. As many of you know, Kerala hasn't been the best sleeper and it seems to be getting much much worse lately. During the day she seems to nap okay - taking about a 45 minute - 1 hr nap in the am, 1 - 1 1/2 hours in the afternoon and sometimes a 20-30 minute nap in the late afternoon or early evening. We would like her to nap a bit more during the day, but she really isn't much for napping. Hopefully we will be able to resolve these sleep issues and by her 8 month birthday I can report that all is well with her sleeping.

We are still moving along with solids pretty well. We just wrapped up the trial run of peas and I don't think she was the biggest fan. She would eat them, but wasn't super excited about them at all. Tomorrow we are moving onto oatmeal, so we will see if she likes that better than rice cereal.

6 months, 4 weeks

 
 

Check out Kerala in her very cute Illini outfit doing the field goal sign. We have two new games that we have been playing with Kerala. The first one is giving her rides around in the laundry basket. She gets super pscyhed if you move her in front of the mirrow. The second game is playing with our big blue exercise ball with Kerala. She really loves it if you bounce the ball or pretend like you are going to roll it over her.

Kerala is still practicing crawling - sometimes she will move really well, but most of the time she makes a couple of attempts at moving and then sprawls out on the ground. Her most recent activity has been doing the downward facing dog yoga position. She will get in a crawl position, but then raise her bottom really high in the air so it really does look like she is doing yoga.

Kerala has been progressing very well with food. Although tonight she was not excited about food at all. She had a bit of rice cereal and then a couple of small bites of peas. I am not sure if she just didn't like the peas or was not really hungry since she really wanted to nurse right before dinner time. We will try peas again tomorrow and see how that goes.

6 months, 3 weeks, 1 day

 
 

We have had a busy few days - a crawl, sweet potatoes and a marathon guest. On Thursday night, Kerala started to crawl a bit. It wasn't pretty, but she was on all fours and crawling a bit. She has only crawled on all fours a few times since, so hopefully it wasn't a fluke and she will be on her way. Even though she isn't up on all fours, she is learning to army crawl and to creep across the floors - she is definitely mobile which means we are off to buy baby fences this coming weekend.

Kerala has started to really like solids. She now gets super excited for her feedings, which is really cute. Similar to her cousin Hannah at this age, she will start to wave her arms in the air once she sees the spoon. Today wrapped up her three day trial of sweet potatoes and she is a fan. Tomorrow we are going to try pears, so we will see. The only negative to her increased interest in solids is that she is drinking less milk, which isn't good. Today, she wasn't really interested in the bottle at all and Ellen struggled to get her to take what she did. Hopefully, this is just a very short lived phase and she will be back to her usual consumption of milk.

This past weekend we had my friend Laura stay with us. Laura ran and finished the crazy Chicago marathon. Great job Laura! We had a very nice visit - Laura even watched Kerala for us Saturday while Troy and I attempted to install Kerala's fancy new car seat. Unfortunately, the car seat won and we had to ask our friend Tamra for assistance (thanks Tamra)

Finally, this past week Troy and I (mainly Troy) set a new record for photos. Troy took almost 400 photos of his little baby. Most of the photos were taken when Kerala was helping daddy fold clothes (the blogged photo is one of those - Kerala loves to munch on her wash clothes).
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6 months, 2 weeks, 3 days

 
 

We have added a new element to the blog page to track our introduction of new foods to Kerala. I have also included her response. She actually did a lot better tonight with her rice cereal - this time we mixed it with water which she seemed to tolerate. We also tried a bit of very ripe avocado last night, which she did not seem to like at all. So far Troy, Ellen and I have mashed up bananas for her, but this weekend we may consider trying some commercial baby food to see if she likes it any better.

As you can see by the blogged photo, Kerala is getting really close to crawling. She is constantly up on all fours, she just can't figure out how everything works together. She has pushed herself backwards a couple of times, but usually she will move either her arms or legs and then collapse. She is getting really strong though - I am just amazed. Kerala has also began to kick her legs in the bathtub. Usually Kereala only splashes with her arms. Recently, she has realized that she can also splash by kicking her legs, which results in much much bigger splashes. The bathroom is truly a mess during Kerala's bath time. Finally, Kerala has added "da da" to her babbling vocabulary. It's quite cute - this morning Troy and I woke up to "da da da da da da da...."

6 months, 2 weeks

 
 

Everyday we see signs that our little girl is getting bigger. Today, we had to move her crib mattress down two levels because she was starting to grab onto the side of the crib. We don't think she could have pulled herself up, but we didn't want to take any chances. Today, we also realized that we had to move up a level of diapers since she kept having accidents in her size two diapers. Kerala is also on her way to crawling - on Friday night she pulled herself all the way across our bed. She wasn't getting her bottom up, but she definitely has the arm strength so we don't think it will be much longer before we need to do some major babyproofing.

This past week, Kerala had a pretty funny experience at her story time. Apparently, she got so excited that she scared the two toddlers that were sitting in front of her. Ellen wasn't sure if she was excited over the story or the possibility of grabbing the two toddlers in front of her. I hope Kerala doesn't get the reputation around the neighborhood as a bully.

As far as eating is going, we introduced bananas to her this weekend. She seemed to like the bananas a bit more than the rice cereal, but that isn't saying too much. The doctor said that it's not that big of a deal if she doesn't eat the solids since we are just trying to introduce her to using a spoon and swallowing solids.

6 months, 1 week, 1 day

 

Kerala finally had her first real meal of solids - and when I mean real, I mean she actually got a couple of spoonfuls of rice cereal. She still isn't psyched about it, but at least she is making progress. It seems like every day she gets a bit more cereal. She has been grabbing the spoon out of our hands and putting it in her mouth - unfortunately, in the process of grabbing the spoon she gets cereal all over her hands but that's okay. She does reach out to grab the bowl, but so far we have been able to keep that away from her.

The blogged photo is Kerala playing in the tray attached to her booster chair. Ellen had the great idea of filling it up with water and letting Kerala splash in it, which Kerala loved.