Kaylee likes spaghetti!

Kaylee did remarkably well yesterday with our spaghetti dinner. We cut up small little pieces for her and she grabbed for them over and over. For one of the first times, we were worried she had too much food in her mouth. I was a little worried about the cheese and her milk allergy, but the noodles we gave her didn't have much parmesan on them so it wasn't an issue. It was really good to see her enjoying it. I am not that surprised since I love italian food so much, and I'm sure she has tasted it as well in the breastmilk. She has liked tasting pizza crust in the past. Maybe we have another italian food lover in the family! We are for sure going to try to feed this to her again to see if we have the same success.

Kaylee slept pretty well last night, only waking two times. The second time her cries were not that hard, she heard me get up and they kind of subsided. I waited outside her door and only heard a couple peeps and after a minute I went back to bed and we slept to 6:30.

I had a nice discussion yesterday with our daycare provider. She thinks Kaylee is about to get up and walk any day now. She says she still has trouble getting Kaylee down for a nap, but has success with the swing and normally puts Kaylee to bed after all the other babies so she doesn't disturb them. She also sits her at the highchair while the other babies go to sleep, giving Kaylee the extra time to eat that she needs to eat.

Kaylee's been taking more risks with cruising and feel and hit her head a couple times yesterday. She didn't hurt herself though since it was on the rug. She laid there stunned and then turned to me to pick her up. It wasn't too traumatic. It seems like she's getting ready to learn how to get herself down from standing up now, and is having a couple crash landings during her testing.

Random new things

What's new with Kaylee?

She can shake her head no now. I don't know if she knows it always means no. It's just something she's practicing...she definitely does it while we try to feed her.

She makes funny noises with her hand over her mouth - you know she says AHHHH and you hear AH...AH...AH.

She's not sucking on toys as much as before.

We had three good nights of sleep and then she was back to her fitful sleeping habits. I try to tank her up on milk as much as I can but I don't know if it's working.

Her cold continues it's been lasting forever...

She's not moving up to the next room at daycare until her birthday - turns out the baby born early doesn't is actually moving to Virginia. So Kathy is more than happy to keep her.

I should go out more often!

I went out last night with the girls. I was a little worried about leaving Kaylee with Eric because he hasn’t given her a bottle in a long time. But things went so fine I think I should definitely get out more often! He took her to the mall and she played on the play equipment there and looked around. He bought me a Valentine’s gift too – a very pretty necklace – a very nice surprise! J Then when they got home, she was a little unhappy so he gave her a bottle and tried to put her down. Then she was fussy after the transfer to the crib so he gave her another bottle. After she had it she slept through the night from 9:30-7! I think we’re going to start giving her a bottle at night to make sure she has a full belly. Maybe that is why Kaylee wakes so often. I certainly would love to have sleeping through the night happen more frequently and whatever we need to do to get there I’m willing to do. So I think Eric may be the one putting her down now at night. We’ll see how we do this weekend if we can sort out a routine…

"Eyelashes"

Last night and this morning, Kaylee has been poking at my eyes a lot. It doesn't really hurt too much, she's just curious. She pulled on my eyelashes last night and I said "Eyelashes." She then repeated, "Eye lasses" It was so cute. Of course I am sure I cannot get her to repeat it again, or really can't get her to be consistent with any words she has said.

So far I've heard:
dada
momma, mom, ma
dog, "gog"
duck, duckie "guckie"
baba
jackson
"ka" and "ki" when near cat
ico (rico)
eyelashes
socks
quack quack

Now I am the one who recognizes most of what she says, I think because I'm with her so much. But Eric and my Mom have heard the dog, duck, dada, mama, jackson and ki sounds as well.

I addition to noticing something as small as eyelashes, she continues to be facinated with buttons. When playing with her toy you put balls into and then the holes light up, she noticed that she can press the button on the inner rim of it. I didn't even see it there. She's really been examining things more and more. She seemed pleased with herself that she got them to light up on her own.

Kaylee climbed stairs!

Kaylee climbed a couple stairs this morning on her way to get to Eric at the top of the stairs. (I was at the bottom ready to catch her if she fell) I was surprised how coordinated she was with it being her first time. She only did two stairs thought and then she got tired and reached out for him to carry her. She's making progress fast. She's also been liking grabbing one peice of furniture on one side and another on the other and let go with one hand, cruising along them. She did this yesterday with the stool in the kitchen on one side and her highchair on the other. She is getting more confident one of these days she will forget to hold on.

We think she might be getting another tooth (a molar) in the back. It hasn't popped through but Eric said he can feel it, it could explain the restlessness at night. We will give Motrin tonight to see if it helps. The last two weeks or so she's been putting her thumb on that side of the mouth to teeth on it pretty consistently.

Kaylee's cruising!

Kaylee had a real busy last few days. Last Thursday her daycare had a carnival – she got to see the clowns, play fishing pond, get her face painted and bounce on the moonwalk (she’s too little to go inside but bounced on the outer portion). She had fun but looked a little overwhelmed. The real time she looked happy was when she saw her teacher Kathy, her face lit up and she reached out to be held. Friday night, her grandparents arrived and stayed until yesterday. It was a really fun long weekend. Eric and I both took a vacation day yesterday to be with them. We took Kaylee for the first time to the zoo – she loved especially seeing the seals. She pounded on the glass and got excited. Her grandpa is really good at taking photos and took some really pretty ones of her in the conservatory with the flowers. I will post them soon.

Kaylee is able to cruise now! She loves especially stuff she’s not supposed to have, heavy things with buttons like the remote control or the phone. She cruises to get the remote control at the other end of the coffee table. She is able to crawl further now and also toddle (with one of us holder her hands) now for a lot longer without getting tired.
Kaylee’s also getting a lot better with eating but still remains inconsistent and tough to feed. But on Saturday her Grandma cooked her up a batch of ribs and she sucked on the bones and ate a little meat. This past week was her first time eating meat and she seems to really like how flavorful it is. She eats a bit of pear now with her breads and crackers. She’ll eat a little cereal but not much.
She hasn’t been sleeping well this past weekend, not sure whether it’s too much sleeping in the car out and about, the caffeine I had, her cold or if they say when babies are learning something like crawling, cruising, walking that it is disruptive to their sleep for a while. I’ll hold of on the caffeine and hopefully with our schedules being a bit more routine she’ll go back to only waking 1-2 times a night. Eric’s really been helpful with this since nursing doesn’t do the trick all the time now like it used to for getting her to sleep.
I’m getting really excited for Kaylee’s first birthday and have started to plan it. Eric and I have been discussing how she can’t really eat cake because of the milk allergy, or maybe I’ll make her her own special cake with breastmilk or have a brownie instead. Mostly I’m excited for everyone to get together!

Likes her train toy

We had my parents over last night for a visit. It was a lot of fun once Kaylee woke up. She was sleeping at first because she's so tired after daycare, especially since she's sick right now. She woke up and at first she was real crabby but when she opened her eyes and saw her grandma/pa sitting there, she quickly perked up and smiled. They loved seeing her crawl better and kept on trying to get her to crawl to them or to a toy. My mom helped me give her a bath before bedtime, and was amazed to hear Kaylee say "duck" when she saw the rubber ducky. She was very tired when they left and only woke up once during the night.

She has some car toys but doesn't seem very coordinated about pushing them around. Eric bought her a train toy yesterday that is bigger and links together. She had a blast last night pushing it around and turned herself around and around on the floor. She loved banging her train into her other toys too and seeing things push around. She was very absorbed with it, trying to figure it out. It's so cute to see her puzzle over things. She's doing that a lot more and hasn't been shouting as much as she was before (out of frustration).

At daycare they've been saying that she is so petite. They say she's the smallest one but the oldest. They think she's really really cute and definitely say they will miss her when she's not in the infant room next month. She is smaller than the other babies, but the other babies are quite huge - for example there's a 5 month old that weighs 19 lbs. That is big! There's a baby that is one week younger than Kaylee that is 26 lbs! Wow! Her mom has to bring in a stroller everyday to pick her up because carrying her all the time is taxing on her (I know this feeling all too well as well). So I don't think it's that Kaylee's so small but as the other babies are formula-fed and are much larger. They don't protest the bottle-feeding and solid-feeding the way that Kaylee does. But Kaylee is still quite healthy, with chubby cheeks and is still heading toward her 1st year birthday looking like she will manage to triple her weight from her birth weight (that's the norm). She is about 20 lbs now. My little baby isn't so little anymore!

"Jackson"

Kaylee said “Jackson!” I was giving her a bath and everytime Jackson came in to visit I said, “Say hi to Jackson. He’s Jackson the Dog. Hi Jackson.” After a while she looked at him and smiled and said Jack-sooon!” Then she looked at me and grinned, and something clicked when she saw I understood she was trying to say it and had repeated what she said. She all of the sudden looked so old to me, much older than I have been seeing her…I can’t explain it. She said Jackson quite a few times, but then later when I tried to get her to say it in front of Eric, she was saying it much less articulately, it sounded like Jawgslok. He then didn’t believe she had been saying it. Oh well, maybe soon.

Kaylee’s getting much better at crawling. We bought a new baby gate that Eric will install. I have my eyes peeled for her now and did a great job of vacuuming this weekend trying to make sure there are no small objects on the floor. I consider her room to be the safest place for her to play and we have been playing a lot more in there recently…

We had a good weekend, yesterday we all got to take a 2 ½ hour nap. Last night for some reason, however, I had terrible insomnia from 1-5 I couldn’t sleep. I think my body now doesn’t know what to do with more sleep – it’s so accustomed to not getting it. Hopefully tonight will be better. We got to see my sister yesterday. Kaylee loved the attention and being out and about.

Kaylee’s getting sick with another cold – we’ve been fortunate that she hasn’t been sick for about 3-4 weeks (longest time she’s not been sick) so I guess it’s our time. I am not looking forward to it, everything seems harder when she’s sick.

Good day yesterday!

Kaylee had a very good day yesterday. She tried french toast and bananas at day care and took an almost 2 hour long nap! She drank her bottle for them too. Then in the evening I was trying to eat our vege platter from the Superbowl, and she tried two sweet peas. She took about 1/2 hour to actually chew it and swallow but it made it's way down, and I was so happy she tried something! She and I played, listened to music. She discovered it's fun to raise the playmat above her head, and make a tent out of it. She loved bathtime, esp. her bath book and did a lot of talking. Lately she loves her puppet toys, she picked out a new puppet book at B & N the other day. Then...! She slept from 12:30 - 6:30! That's my favorite part!

Hope we have another day like yesterday today!!!

Growth spurt?

Kaylee's been nursing like crazy all weekend, and the last part of last week. I don't know if this is a time that infant's typically have a growth spurt but it sure seems that way to me, either that or her not eating solids regulary is really catching up to her. She's been nursing every 1 1/2 or so. She doesn't sleep well at night (and of course then neither do I). I can't quite keep up with her and this morning only had 2 bottles to bring to daycare. I hope it'll be enough. It's stressful! I don't know if I should try formula again, pump more regularly or work on getting her to eat harder than I already am. I can't force feed her. Anyways, it's a stressor we're dealing with...

Kaylee's figured out how to make a really annoying noise like a little yell to get our attention. She does it when she wants something to change: pick me up, don't change me, pay attention to me, I don't like that...it's annoying. I guess therefore it's effective. I hope she learns to communicate soon without a lot of sqwacking! She still manages to be cute about 90% of the time, though.

Happy 10 month birthday to Kaylee (this last Saturday)!