Think I’ll start something new and list some interesting stats about Payton each month.
So here are her 7 month stats:
- Age: 7 months, 1 week
- Weight: probably about 20 pounds
- Height: not sure
- Eye color: still blue
- Hair color: light brown with some areas really light and on top darker brown
- Favorite toy: Fisher Price plastic stacking rings
- New foods: avocado, banana, apple, sweet potato, baked potato, butternut squash
- Favorite food: banana, rice cereal, or sweet potato
- Least favorite food: apple
- Number of teeth: 3
- Makes her smile: when you pretend she’s riding a horse on your knee or lifting her above your head
- Makes her laugh: wiping her mouth or singing the “Daddy wants to pick your nose” song (sung to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb")
- Makes her cry: being dried off after a bath, putting clothes on over her head
- Favorite place to be: playing in her exersaucer
- Can say: lala, mama, ababa, ahhh
- Milestones: rolling from back to tummy, sitting without falling over, eating new foods, sitting in shopping cart
- Clothing size: 9- 12 months
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| Payton on Easter morning--- in her bunny hat |
Easter
Payton’s 7th month started with her first Easter. We went to Dallas for Easter weekend to see Charles’ mom, grandmother, cousin T.J., and friends Lindy and Teresa. Since Payton’s not old enough to hunt Easter eggs, dye eggs, or eat chocolate bunnies, we didn’t really engage in the usual Easter traditions. Next year Easter will be especially fun when she is old enough to really participate and enjoy our family’s Easter activities. Still, we had a very nice weekend and then spent Easter driving back to Galveston.
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| Payton and her great-grandmother "Grandma" |
New Foods
The theme for the month are all the new foods that Payton has been eating. I make all of her food homemade, except for her rice cereal. This month she has had banana, avocado, sweet potato, baked potato, apple, and butternut squash. We introduce one food to her at a time and then feed it to her for a minimum of 4 days before moving on to a new food to make sure she isn’t allergic to anything we’re giving her. Charles has a severe tree nut allergy so as a result Payton has a 25% chance of also having a food allergy. I’m just hoping and praying that she doesn’t have a food allergy as well. We will definitely be holding off on introducing any highly allergic foods to her. We aren’t even going to introduce peas just yet because her pediatrician said they can be closely related to peanuts and thus cause an allergic reaction in those with an allergy to them.
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| Payton opens wide for her food... she's a good little eater! |
Payton loves eating solid foods and many times will say “Mmmmm” with each bite that you give her. She opens her little mouth wide whenever she sees the spoon coming her direction. Since she really loves eating, it’s hard to tell what her favorite food is. But if I had to guess, she seems to get most excited over the rice cereal, banana, and sweet potato. Her least favorite food so far seems to be apple. She’ll eat it but often makes a face or gags a little. And here I had been warned not to introduce sweet foods at first…. The apple is the sweetest food she’s getting and she’s not much of a fan. This week we are introducing broccoli and carrots. Foods that are not sweet at all so she should love them!
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| Not a fan of the sink bath! |
Sleep
Payton still has yet to sleep through the night. She tends to wake up a few times during the night wanting her pacifier back in her mouth. During the day she can put it back in her mouth on her own but at night she just lays there and says, “Ah, ah, ah” until one of us comes and puts it back in. She is also back to nursing once in the middle of the night, usually sometime between 3:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m.. I’m beginning to wonder if she will ever learn to sleep through the night! LOL I know there are plenty of people out there who would tell me to just let her cry herself back to sleep and let her learn to be independent. But my feeling is, she is only 7 months old, God didn’t make infants to be independent. That will come with time. All babies eventually learn to sleep through the night and she will when she is ready. Until then, I just try to enjoy our middle of the night quiet time together. It certainly won’t last forever. Also a cute note: She has started sleeping on her side much of the time. We lay her down on her back, put her pacifier in her mouth, and then she rolls over onto her side and goes to sleep. I don’t know why but it’s the cutest thing!
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| Relaxing with her cousin Hank. |
Mother’s Day
My first Mother’s Day was very nice. My parents came to visit for the weekend and the weather was beautiful. We went on the Galveston Historic Homes tour while Charles’ stayed home with Payton while she napped and it was really nice. That Friday Payton learned her first word and guess what is was…. Mama! So for the entire weekend she went around saying, “Mamama”. Of course she doesn’t know what it means but it was still so cute! For Mother’s Day Charles and Payton gave me a framed collage of Payton pictures with the title “1st Mother’s Day” on it.
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| My baby girl and I |
When I was a bratty little kid (I'm still bratty, just not a little kid anymore), on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day my brothers and I would say, “That’s not fair, when is Kid’s Day?” And my parents would respond with, “Every day is Kid’s Day!” But now that I’m the parent I will respectfully disagree. I absolutely love being a mother and wouldn’t want to trade places with Payton even if I could.
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| Payton with Hank and Uncle Albert |
Disrespect
The second weekend of May we went to my parent’s house to visit them as well as my brothers, sister-in-law, and nephew. It was fun to have Payton and her cousin Hank together again. They have both grown so much since they were last together in February! Payton is definitely still bigger than Hank. The two interacted quite a bit, trying to grab each other, trying to steal each other’s pacifiers, and playing with their toys. The weather was beautiful so the babies also got to enjoy sometime on a blanket outside under my parent’s big pecan tree. At one point we were in the living room watching the babies and Albert said something to Erin and I. No one seems to remember what Albert really said, but suddenly Charles, who was in the kitchen, said, “Did you just say Payton is disrespecting Hank? She’d better not be disrespecting anyone!” We had a good laugh and for the rest of the weekend if someone tried to steal someone else’s toy or touched someone who didn’t want to be touched, we reminded them not to disrespect each other.
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| Choking your cousin is a good example of disrespect. |
Growing Fast!
Payton has always been a big baby but it seems like lately she has really shot up! It seemed like she barely even wore her 6-9 month clothes before she was too big for them and wearing 9-12 month clothes. Now she wears 12 month and even some 18 month clothes! And she’s only a little over 7 months old. I always thought if I had a girl she would be small like me and if I had a boy he would be big like Charles. Somehow the idea that I might have a girl who took after Charles never really occurred to me so I still find it hard to believe I have a big baby girl. It will be interesting to see if she’ll continue to be big for her age as she gets older.
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| What is that on your face, Uncle Kyle? |
Keep rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, what?! (Okay, I admit, I still love Limp Bizkit)
The day after Payton turned 7 months old (May 16, 2011) she intentionally started rolling herself from her back to her tummy in order to prop herself up on her arms to play with her toys. Before this she had a couple of times accidentally rolled onto her tummy but immediate rolled right back onto her back. The following night this skill contributed to an incident in her crib. What looks to have happened was that she was likely lying on her back with her legs sticking out through the slats when she decided to roll over onto her tummy. She started screaming and I ran in to find her lying on her tummy with her legs stuck all the way through the crib slats at a funny angle. For a minute my heart raced as I thought she might have really hurt herself! But after getting her unstuck and nursing her, she fell right back asleep. The next morning upon close inspection I couldn’t find even a bruise from the incident. But I think we are still going to invest in the breathable bumpers just so I don’t have to worry about her getting herself stuck again. Thanks to her nighttime (and daytime) practice, by the end of the week Payton was rolling herself clear across a room.
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| Playing on her tummy. |
