Day 205

 

HADLEY GRACE IS 7 MONTHS OLD!!

This month more than any other flew by, I mean really wasn’t it just yesterday we were celebrating her half birthday with a cupcake?!?! Anyway, Hadley is growing so fast. Her personality is becoming  more and more apparent, as is her strong will. She is eating like a champ and has decided she wants to roll ALL the time.

Here are the highlights/things I learned about Hadley Grace this month:

·      She tried several new foods including: blue berries, mangoes, cantaloupe, turnips, eggplant, spinach, and prunes- she loves all of them

·      Hadley will only do what Hadley wants to do, when she wants to do it. I suppose this is a case of payback for my raising. This manifest itself in several ways:

o     Refusing to bend her legs to get in the car seat, or any seat- she makes herself as stiff as board sometimes

o     Fighting sleep; this is the WORST. She will be clearly exhausted, but if I seem to be trying to make her go to sleep she will scream and arch her back, it really is a sight.

o     She wants to feed herself

o     And my least favorite the whining that occurs when she is not the center of attention.   

·      She is sitting up all the time now and has learned how to go from sitting to crawling position, although no actually crawling is happening

·      Hadley has become a tummy sleeper, since she is all about rolling, she has started to roll to her tummy in her sleep  and actually seems to sleep better this way- sometimes a 6-7 hour stretch!

·      That being said she does still wake up once to twice in the night for a sip of bottle, but goes right back to sleep.

·      She has moved up to 6 month clothing size…my petite baby is no more!

·      She LOVES to laugh and does it all the time. She has the best laugh!

·      We are smack dab in the middle of teething, no teeth yet, but lots of fussing and drooling!

·      I think I am starting to see more of my physical characteristics in her, I had the opportunity to see Hadley next to her dad this month, and was a little surprised to see that they don’t look as much alike as they once did…but the blonde hair and blue eyes definitely aren’t mine!

·      Hadley LOVES dogs. At first she was obsessed with Jake, but since he was put to sleep she was  cannot get enough of Maggie (my mom’s dog). Unfortunately she has quite the interest in grabbing at dogs’ eyes, so dogs don’t tend to love her as much as she loves them. I need to get a dog- I want one so badly, but I can’t handle a puppy and a baby alone in a second story apartment now, but there will be another dog or two in our future ( I see a chocolate lab and a dachshund)

·      Hadley is quite curious about men’s facial hair. Interestingly enough most of the men in her life ( Bop, PaPa James, Paw-Paw, and her father) all have some sort of facial hair mostly mustaches, but Josh has a bit of chin hair. She will grab for it every time.

·      She babbles ALL THE TIME. She has a ton to say- I just don’t understand it. She is making a lot of consonant sounds. She has said consonant sounds so that they sound like a word (ie dada), but she doesn’t know what she is saying so I wouldn’t call that talking…I am ready for the day she looks at something and calls it correctly, like baba, or of course mama!

·      I already knew this, but Hadley is so adorable…everywhere we go, everyone is just drawn to her, I can’t go anywhere without someone wanting to look at her, comment on her, or touch her (this actually happens a lot- good think I am not a germaphobe).

I think this has been my favorite month thus far, mostly because we spent most of it together 24/7. She really is such an amazingly good baby…BUT when she isn’t good she is REALLY bad. I mean every once in a while it may take her an hour and a half of crying before going to bed…but then she will wake up and be super cuddly and loving and you forget how much stress she caused. She knows what she is doing I suppose. I am hoping that the next month brings teething, crawling, and maybe even talking…

Day 204

 

This was the last week of four day work weeks for my mom, she we decided to journey out to the outlet mall in Conroe to search for sheets; several years ago I bought great sheets there. However, when we reached the outlet mall we were shocked to see most of the stores were no longer there…seriously most of the outlet mall was empty- what a waste.  So we headed to the next stop on our agenda Sam Moon in The Woodlands. My mom suggested getting Hadley a suitcase of sorts rather than using her diaper bag, because as she gets bigger fewer and fewer of her outfits, bows, diapers, etc fit into her diaper bag.  We found a cute pink polka dot rolling bag that should do the trick. We got some jewelry as well, I even got Hadley a new pair of earrings, I had been looking for some CZ studs and they had a pair that was perfect. I had to go into the Home store, because I was looking for a cross to add to my wall o’ crosses- and I found the perfect one. We also went to Hobby Lobby to pick up some ribbon and supplies to make Hadley two more bow holders. She had one that I made with an H, so I made the second two with a G and a B (for Grace and Boyd). Now she has a place for ALL of her bows and even some additional space as her collection grows.

Day 203

My mom took off today so spend some time with Hadley and I before we go back home for good. We had a full day of shopping. On the agenda: get Hadley a bath seat (because she has taken to wanting to roll over in the bath tub and this SCARES ME TO DEATH),  get myself a nice new pair of black heels for work, continue our search for zebra sheets for me( still unsuccessful, evidently no one with a king size bed wants zebra print- other than in satin- that gives me the creeps and in a really low thread count. Call me spoiled but I like at least 500, I mean I don’t want to sleep on gritty nasty sheets), and picture frames for my growing collection of Hadley photos. We also managed to squeeze a lunch in, which was nice.

At home, we gave the bath seat a try. I have mixed feeling about it. Overall it is much better for washing most of Hadley. Since she is sitting down it makes it a bit tricky to get the parts that really need a good cleaning- you catch my drift?? It also is a bit difficult to rinse her hair as I am afraid she will somehow manage to get water up her nose and drown- yes I am a freak, but that stuff scares me.  I am working on ways to get her to look up while I pour water over head, thanks to her trusty rubber ducky. I think she likes it which is good. Bath time is all of 5 minutes long usually so I suppose it isn’t too much of a hindrance or anything…

Day 202

 

My dad was in New York last week for his annual family reunion/high school reunion/most important- golf tournament, so I decided to go visit him and see how it went. I had to deal with some drama on the way there, that made my visit not as enjoyable as I would have liked, because I was so MAD. I was in such a tizzy I left the pictures of Hadley I was supposed to be taking o my dad at my mom’s house, so I am going to need to make another trip out to drop those off, oh well at least Hadley will get to see her Bop again. Once I calmed down we actually had a pretty nice visit with my dad. On the way home Hadley took a nap, so I went and parked in an empty parking lot to pull out my bible to give me some guidance after the events of the afternoon. I prayed about it, and randomly opened the Bible and wouldn’t you know it the verse I happened upon was EXACTLY what I needed to read…

When we headed home, Hadley had prunes and sweet potatoes for dinner, took a bath, and went to sleep pretty easily, which is a rare occasion these days…again I think that a God thing too

Day 201

Today Hadley and I had a girls’ day with Tara, and we went to two of my favorite places on Earth…Chilli’s and Target. Tara is awesome and has made it her mission to get pictures of me and Hadley together when we see her, because I had written about how as a single parent it isn’t very often the opportunity arises to have someone take our picture, so she got a few cute shots of us at Chilli’s. Hadley did pretty well at lunch, until she managed to get her hand in my soup; luckily it wasn’t really hot at that point. After lunch we ran to Target for a little shopping, I had heard there was a good baby sale there, but when we got there everything had been pretty picked over, I did however find two cute fall outfits- that were not on sale.  I have to admit, I am really enjoying having a BFF with a baby that is at least pretty close in age to Hadley, I mean I was just were Tara was, in fact from the sounds of it Landon and Hadley get up the same amount of times during the night- I am sure he will be sleeping through the night long before Hadley does.   As soon as I dropped Tara off, Hadley passed out in the car, so we did a little driving so she could get a bit of a nap in before heading home.

Day 200

While at the doctor last week, we were told that ideally Hadley will be completely off the bottle by one year old; she also told me this would “break my heart,” I am not so sure why (I guess I am supposed to be sad she is growing up, but cleaning bottles in a pain in the butt, and I will be glad when they are gone). Anyway, she said we needed to start introducing a sippy cup, so that Hadley could get used to it. I have bought a few sippy cups and haven’t had much success, mostly because Hadley doesn’t like to drink quickly- I can’t even use a 3 bottle nipple, which is for 3 month olds, because she gets all choked up because the flow is too fast (clearly she is not into guzzling like her mama).  She is definitely interested in my cup and without fail always reaches for whatever I am drinking and/or becomes obsessed with a cup sitting on the table, so the interest is there. While shopping for her something else,  I stumbled upon a sippy cup with one hole, which I surmised would mean a slower flow…so I bought it. I have given it to her a few times, with water or a water and apple juice mixture. She is by no means fully converted, but she seems to understand the concept, so we are working on it…

Day 199

Today we made the trip back to Humble for my final week of summer break (boo!). This would be the last time my mom would be making the trip with me, so the next time Hadley and I embark upon the four hour trip it will be just the two of us. The trip went pretty well, Hadley actually slept for about 3 hours of it, which made things A WHOLE LOT easier. When we got home I was ready to make Hadley a new food combination a mom on  my baby food making group raved about- mango and spinach. I know that sounds a bit gross, but Hadley loves mango and didn’t really take to spinach as much as I would have like, so I thought  it would be worth a shot. OH. MY. GOODNESS.  She loved it she could not get that stuff in her mouth fast enough, so that combo will definitely be making its way into our rotation. Hadley really just loves mangoes, so I think I will be mixing them with lots of foods…to bad mangoes can get a bit pricey…