7 Months!

Last Thursday (the 28th of June), Cadence hit the 7 month mark!

Reaching 7 months with Cadence is bittersweet, because it means my year with her as a baby, is already half over. This realization totally passed me by with Adelaide, because I had no real sense for how truly fast they go from baby to toddler, but I know it all too well now, and I’m kind of sad to know that half of the time I get to snuggle my tiny baby, my LAST tiny baby, is already gone.

*sigh*

Well, this past month was a real head spinner. It was super chaotic and busy and not normal, and Cadence ROCKED IT! Seriously! So super impressed with this girl and how well she rolled with all of the changes and disruptions to her “normal” life.

We had Matt’s parents in town staying with us from the 5th through the 15th, a 12 hour drive to California for a family reunion with my family on the 15th, a 12 hour drive back to Portland only 72 hours later, and then my mom in town staying with us from the 21st through the 26th. And I’ll say it again. Cadence totally ROCKED IT. Through all of this craziness Cadence’s true temperament was exposed and we loved it!

She showed us that she’ll befriend just about anyone, if she’s given time to become comfortable in her environment. This is a total surprise, coming from the baby who used to cry as soon as she left my arms. I DID NOT expect her to warm to Nancy and George, or my mom or any of the people she met at the reunion, BUT SHE DID! She let my extended family at the reunion HOLD HER! And I was able to leave her at home with the grandparents while I ran errands!!! OMGSOTOTALLYAWESOMEILOVEDIT!! And Matt and I had a date night for the first time in MONTHS! It was really, really wonderful to feel comfortable leaving our kids and knowing that they wouldn’t be screaming their heads off.

In the last month she was asked to sleep in five different locations…AND SHE ACTUALLY SLEPT! That was a real shock to us, because Adelaide had (still has) about a three day adjustment period to sleeping in any new location. It was horrible to travel with her when she was Cadence’s age…she just didn’t sleep, and therefore we didn’t sleep. In fact, during our nights in the hotel in California, Cadence slept better than Adelaide did! Amazing. Just Amazing.

Cadence did GREAT on the long drive to and from Sacramento. We stopped every two hours to get everyone out of the car/fed/changed/etc. She only had three crying fits and they were at her normal nap times as a prelude to falling asleep. Seriously, she did great. SO MUCH BETTER THAN WE WERE EXPECTING!!!

In addition to being an awesome sleeper and traveler, she has met some new developmental milestones. She still isn’t crawling in the traditional sense (apparently neither of my kids are traditional crawlers) but she can army crawl her way across the room and prefers to move in this manner. It count’s as crawling and so ya, I can say I have a crawler now.

She also sits! She’s been working on her sitting skills for the past two months, and now, when I place her in the seated position, she actually holds herself up for long periods of time and can play with toys in her hands while sitting. So cool! It’s got to be such a neat experience to go from only seeing the world from lying down, to suddenly seeing everything right side up.

She is an excellent eater-of-solid-foods and is quickly moving into finger foods. She loves to gum on teething biscuits and now that she’s figuring out how to mash up food in her mouth, we’ll start giving her tiny pieces of fruit and cooked veggies so she can feed herself. Adelaide loved to feed herself (she hated being spoon fed) and I’m curious to see if Cadence will be the same way.

Cadence tried (and loved) her first pickle this month. LOL! She also did really well eating from food pouches, which is awesome because that means I have food-on-the-go for her!

The biggest trial from this month, was learning that she won’t eat from a bottle. GRRRRRRR! (According to my mom, I had this coming, because as a baby, I also refused to eat from a bottle…thanks universe…) Anyhow, so ya, Cadence won’t drink milk from a bottle…as soon as that silicone nipple hits her mouth she starts chewing on it. Thank god she doesn’t do that to me! haha!

I take full responsibility…I didn’t give her any bottle feedings while I was home with her because, duh, why would I? But now I see that a bottle feeding every now and then may have prevented my child’s total cluelessness about proper bottle etiquette. I’m currently doing everything I can think of to get Cadence to accept a bottle as a source of nutrition, but nothing is really working. I’ll probably write up a post on my bottle feeding woes, but for now, any and all advice is welcome!

And finally, here is our girl, now a whole 7 months old!