This is 7 Months.

I feel like 7 months if full of all the things.  This month may be the one that I have seen the most growth and change and I feel like it has all happened in the past week too!

Cora is still not a fan of baby food.  Every now and then she will eat sweet potatoes but anything else, she clamps her mouth down and shows zero interest. We try every night and basically throw away a lot of jars full of food.  One day she did decided puffs were not meant to feed the dog with but that she can indeed eat them.  And Mum Mum’s are a huge, messy, favorite.  I have moved on to giving her regular food which she seems more obliged to try.  Avocados being a favorite, mangos not.  Otherwise, she just likes her bottles.  This weekend she actually just started eating more than 4oz at a time.  I know.  I see other kids chugging 8 oz bottles but she won’t sit still long enough for that.

Due to all the busyness and not eating during the day, she still thinks the middle of the night is appropriate for all the bottles.  She still gets up twice a night, chugs them down and crashes.  I will say that it isn’t so bad because we are getting to the point that going down for bed and naps are so easy.  We rock her with a bottle and when done we set her in her crib and she puts herself to sleep.  No fighting.  Man, it all does get easier.

In the past week her first tooth has popped through, she took off crawling, and started pulling herself up on things.  When she gets ahold of your hands she wants you to walk her around the room.  Or if there is a toy to push around, so she can walk, she will do that as well.  She actually prefers to push around the diaper boxes.  I would bet she will walk in the next couple of weeks.  Yikes!

Then there is the planking.  I don’t know if it is from watching me do yoga daily or what but she gets there and holds her plank for a long time intentionally.  All. The. Time.  Other parents at her daycare have even commented on it.  She has amazing form!

Due to all of her crazy new moves, we officially had to take down her infant swing.  She could climb out of it (even while belted in) and was trying to pull herself up on it.  I posted a side by side photo of her last swing and her first swing. Woah, all the feelings right there.  This is officially the first month that I keep thinking to myself, slow down baby girl, time is flying.

She says mama and chases her poor puppy around the house.  We have put her in her little blow up swimming pool in the front yard.  She loves being strapped to me while we go for walks.  (I bought the Ergobaby by the way, best purchase ever!) We have also officially started letting her sit in shopping carts now like a big girl.  I also finally gave in at restaurants and let her sit in their high chairs.  All this has made our ability to get up and go just a bit easier.

Lots of people like to ask me about her schedule.  I can tell you that she isn’t an overly scheduled baby.  The one thing she is consistent about is bedtime at 7:30.  But if we choose to say, get 8pm reservations somewhere to eat and take her, no biggie! She goes with the flow.  She gets up between 5am and 7am, no rhyme or reason.  For the most part she is now taking three big naps a day or a million cat naps, depending on if we are home or not.  She takes a bottle when she wants one and we only wrestle with the food situation at dinner time.  I can say I am thrilled she is so flexible because we are on the  move a lot.

More than anything, she is becoming more and more interactive which makes it much more fun for us. I don’t feel as exhausted from figuring it all out.  I don’t question what I do as much, instead I just let her take the lead.  I think we might just be figuring this parenting thing out.

And because life is fun, we are heading into her 8th month with hand, foot and mouth disease.  That is such a joy.