8 months

Katelyn turned 8 months old yesterday! She is growing so fast and learning so much every day.

Here are a few things she likes to do at this age:

- a lot of babbling, giggling, and squealing
- eat bananas and sweet potatoes
- can give high fives! :)
- hold on and walk around different things
- crawl really fast
- eat every 3-4 hours
- go to bed at 7:30 or 8:00 p.m.

This past month I gave myself a challenge: To help Katelyn be able to fall asleep on her own. This may not be a challenge for some parents, but in my case it was.

Katelyn only fell asleep if she drank a bottle, that was her routine. I wanted her to be able to fall asleep on her own though (for various reasons). I knew it would require a lot of patience especially if I did not want to just let her cry herself to sleep (which I definitely did not want her to do). So I took on the challenge. I set up a routine for her every night as well as lengthened the time in between each feeding session during the day, and moving her bed time up earlier. She was eating every two hours and a friend recommended I try every 3-4 hrs. so I did. I also read somewhere to try moving the bed time up.

She struggled the first night w/o a bottle and with me just helping her in her crib fall asleep. It took about an hour and a half or wanting to come out of her crib, tossing, turning, rubbing her back, scratching her back, until she finally fell asleep on her own. This went on for about four days, and finally she slowly got the hang of it. Each nap time she did better and better. Each bed time she did better and better. And now she does great at both! She knows the routine and will usually just lay down turn for a minute or two and fall right asleep. It's so nice not to have to hear her cry and feel bad, and not to have to depend on a bottle to put her to sleep. I'm so proud of her.

I feel like this has helped both of us so much. She doesn't wake up at 2 or 4 a.m. to eat anymore.  I think because the longer stretches she has between feedings now. And also because if she does wake up in the middle of the night she can put herself back to sleep. It's really nice to be able to sleep straight through the night :)

She is getting so big and I can't believe she has really been with us for 8 months now. We enjoy her every minute of every day!

Can you find me....

Now that Katelyn is mobile she will go ANYWHERE and EVERYWHERE. We've tried putting up a few barriers.. like this:

but she's just so sneaky!

I was watching her this morning (ok I guess I got a little distracted obviously, but you can't say you haven't either!) And I looked up and she wasn't next to me, but I could hear her... can you see her in the picture?

here I am momma!

She had squeezed her little body through behind our big chair. Haha. And then she tried getting out and got a little mad because she couldn't... I think she probably thought "I got into this place, so I know I can get out!"

This next picture is just a funny picture I had to put up because she does it all the time. She puts her binky in upside down and I think it's the cutest thing ever. The other day she had it in and kept taking it out while trying to fall asleep to nap. She kept fussing and then she finally took it out put it back in upside down and immediately fell asleep. It was so funny, but maybe she likes it better that way :)

We were eating dinner last night while she was in the living room playing and she kept coming to join us.. just underneath us.

She loves to stand up on everything. She crawls, but I think she stands up and walks along things more than crawling. I think she'll be walking reaaaally soon!

she loves her little cart.

There she is standing up again on anything she can.

She's so silly. Here she is hanging on the couch!

And again, getting into everything. This is okay though because that's her toy box :)

One last thing. Katelyn has accomplished something i've been working on since... basically Day 1. She says momma! I mean, you can tell me it's just her and I had nothing to do with it. But I think it was me. I took her to the mirror every morning, pointed to myself, said momma, then pointed to her and said Katelyn. I would say it really slow and move my lips and she would just stare. I did it ALL the time. And that's all she'll say :) You can probably tell I'm proud of myself, and I am cause I worked with her a lot. So the next word I'm teaching her is.... DADDA!

7 months!

I really can't believe Katelyn is seven months old now. It seems like the year is flying by so fast. She is growing up so fast and I feel like sometimes I can't keep up.

I went through all of her pictures a couple of months ago to pick my favorites for her baby book. I told Nick I would only pick the very best ones and my absolute favorites. Then that way there wouldn't be too many to print out and I wouldn't end up with a bunch extra because there wouldn't be enough room in her book. I picked out 220 pictures. The whole condensing process didn't really work for me.

Every day she does something new and every day she makes so many memories for us to remember. She is such a sweetie.

Katelyn sits up really well now. Almost never falls back anymore.

She tries to stand up on everything. And just last night we were over at a friends house and they had this little cart/lawn mower looking type thing and she was able to push it around the room and walk with it.

She's getting a lot faster at crawling, but she always pushes herself up on her legs.. I think she's trying to stand.

She smiles and laughs so much now that she can move and get into whatever she wants. We've had to watch out what we leave around now because she'll get into anything and everything. We always have to shut our bedroom door because she goes after the little door stopper and pulls it off the wall. Whenever we open the door she cruises over and tries to get in, then we shut it and she gets mad.

I was trying to find an outfit for her to wear for her seventh month pictures and I pulled out one of her very first newborn Sunday dresses. This was the first one she wore to church and she can still wear it. It makes me happy because I still feel like she is my tiny little newborn. She is such a happy baby and always smiling. We sure do love her!

Katelyn 7 Months