Happy belated 6 month birthday to Reese! It feels like she has been with us forever so it is hard to believe it was really only 6 months ago that she officially joined our family. Here is her latest:
Eating: Thank the lord, as of last Monday we have had a bottle break through! That day Tom's mom watched her, and we switched her to level 3 nipples and the first bottle she took 8 oz!!!! Then she took 6oz and then 8oz for the rest of the day and since that day she has never looked back. No more wimpy 2-3oz bottles. The least amount of milk she has drank since then at one feeding is 5 oz. And she is making up for lost time too. Sometimes drinking 5 or 6 oz and then another 5 or 6 oz less than 2 hours later. Such a relief. Now we can give her bottles without fear of her fighting us and not getting enough milk when I am working all day. I think switching the nipples had a little to do with it but I think she just finally decided it was ok to like bottles too. One less stress in our lives. She also eats solids once or twice a day and sometimes eats a lot and sometimes eats just a little, just depends. She has had pears, apples, banana's and sweet potatoes so far in addition to rice cereal. So far pears is the winner for favorite food.
Sleeping: A couple weekends ago Tom went out of town for a day/night and the week before it I was about to have a mental breakdown just thinking about having no Reese relief and help for 24 hours, and it was all because I was tired of living my life with only short increments of sleep between feedings. So I decided it was time to sleep train her and "Ferberize" her and she has done so well. After not even a week we had her going at least 9 hours between feedings at night. We worked really hard on putting her down awake and letting her comfort herself and also not picking her up or feeding her overnight. (oh and we cut out the swing. Don't use it at all anymore). She still wakes up and cries at some point over night most nights, but depending on how long and hard she cries, we either just let her cry it out or we go comfort her and re-wrap her in her bed. Yes, she still is a swaddle baby. Who knows how long she will keep that up. It calms her down and she likes it really tight. Also, if she is fussy, she gets catatonically calm if I blow zerberts on her neck. Calms her right down and she closes her eyes and just grins. I love it. She usually takes 3-4 naps a day, usually 3. One is usually a long one, anywhere from 1.5 hours to 3 hours. The short ones are 30-40 min. Today all she had was 3 30 min ones but yesterday she took two 2 hours ones so you just never know. Overall though, we are in such a better place with sleeping so I cannot complain. I am starting to feel human again.
Development: Reese is no where near sitting, which months ago I thought she would be doing for sure at this point. Since she refuses (mostly) to bend at the waist it really puts a damper on learning that skill. In actuality she does ok at it when you force her to bend but we don't practice as much as we should. She'll get there eventually. She just does not see how that is a skill that will be useful to her. She would much rather skip right on to walking. She wants so badly to be able to stand at her brother's train table and play with his stuff. She is Tom Hanks in the movie "Big". She is mobile now. She has this army crawl/scoot that gets her from here to there. She is actually pretty fast and man does she have quite the determined face when she see's something she wants. Which is usually one of her brother's toys/things which leads to sibling rivalry since Dono does not appreciate the fact that Reese is a baby and does not follow his orders. A quote from Sunday morning, "Don't pull my shirt Reese! That makes me not so happy!" She is also talking. Some mamas, dadas, yiyis and what nots. So fun!
This past month Reese gave me a health scare. Tom noticed a lump on her neck and I felt a couple hard, immovable lymph nodes that really scared me. The next day we saw the pediatrician and he said they were a little harder than he would like to feel so he sent us for blood work. Sad to see your little 5ish month old getting blood drawn from her. Of course my mind went to the worst place possible. It was the scariest 5 days of my life. After the lab results got back I had to call him for the interpretation and got to talk to the nurse instead of him (awesome. actually the exact opposite of that) and through her he said it looked indicative of a virus but he wanted us to go see a Pediatric surgeon anyways. What he was thinking behind this, I don't know, I didn't get to talk to him. So we went and that surgeon was a saint and took lots of time looking and feeling all over her and asking me questions. He thinks they are either just weird lymph nodes or dermatoid cysts and he reassured me and dampened all my crazy mom thoughts. He wants to see us back if they get worse or in 6-8 weeks from our appointment, whichever comes first so hopefully it is the latter. So anyways, hopefully it remains no big deal and we don't have to have him take them out, which is still a possibility. I'll keep you posted. Suffice to say that I hope this is the biggest health scare my children have for a long, long time. Being a parent is too scary.
I bought this adorable hat for Reese on Etsy last week. Ordered a size 6-12 months so it would last her all winter. We got it and it was WAY to big. The sizing is totally off. So to illustrate that, I had Dono try it on and what do you know, it fits my 2 1/2 year old boy perfectly. (excuse Dono's pink teeth, he was slamming some juice).
Donovan wanted me to put Reese in his hiding spot yesterday (the cool spot under his bed). I said I would put her in there if he went too. I got about 5 pics of the two of them in there and this is the best.
Reese was playing with her toys and brothers bag (actually it was originally Petey's dog bag) and it ended up on her arm just like a little purse. Little lady is accessorizing already.
All in all, such a fun month and I can't wait to see what is in store for us this month. Hopefully a happy and healthy baby girl that continues to light up our life! We love you Reesie Poo!
Standing by one of the bigger planes, but focussing on those in the air.
