Child DevelopmentParenting

Aven: 6-7 months

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Today my baby is 7 months old – where does the time go? 6-7 months has been a big one for her and almost all of it coming in the last 2 weeks that we’ve spent visiting family over thanksgiving in Ontario. Aside from a few hastily scribbled entries in her baby book, and a novel of a note on my iPhone, I haven’t really been chronicling her progress. I figure better late than never! Here is the quick rundown

Measurements: She is now 17 lbs (7.7 kilos) and 26.5 inches (68 cm)

Mobility
Aven was rolling regularly by 3 months old and doing the worm crawl (push up on hands and knees and flop forward, repeat) by 5 months. At 6 1/2 months she was crawling quickly on her hands and knees. She is now pulling herself up to her knees on furniture regularly and occasionally pulling right up to standing. She can climb over obstacles with ease. She takes steps when someone is holding her hand, but just a few. She can sit up fairly well and keep her balance but will often straighten her legs and fall over backwards. She can go from sitting to on her tummy easily.

Eating
She started solids at 5 months. We found that rice cereal and bananas did not agree with her poor little tummy, but she loves oat cereal. She prefers veggies over fruit and so far is not crazy about meat. As we don’t have allergies in the family and she’s a second child, we’re not super strict about the one new item every 3 days. We do a partial baby lead weaning as she really loved puréed food in the beginning, but now is really getting into cold apples and cucumber (I think teething), cooked green beans, corn, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, carrots, mashed potato and sweet potato. For about 3 of the 4 weeks she was on a breastmilk and formula strike. It started that she didn’t want to nurse unless she was going to sleep, but would take a bottle just fine. Ok, so I pumped as much as I could, supplemented where needed and nursed at naps and through the night. After 2 weeks of that she decided she didn’t want a bottle either while awake, just while going to sleep. We tried sippy cups, straws, open cups – everything you could think of. As I was starting to really panic, it subsided. She is back to nursing at sleepy times and bottle during the day. And actually swinging more toward bottle over solids now. Always keeping me on my toes!! I’m hoping to continue nursing and pumping even one bottle per day through the winter to keep her immunity up with big sister bringing home all the germs from kindergarten.

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Still no teeth to report!

Sleeping
Sleeping continues to be tiring (ha!). It’s hard playing musical beds and I think that is contributing to some of her difficulty. On an average night she goes to bed around 7 in her crib in our bedroom. She is up at least 4 times but often more. Because Scott works midnights, at some point in the night I generally get tired of the up and down and will keep her in bed with me so I can get some sleep! On night a Scott is home she generally stays in the crib unless something happens and she’s very upset. Daddy takes the duty of fetching, changing diapers and outing her back after feeds so it’s much easier! Then during the day Aven naps on a mattress on the floor in Adris room as Daddy is asleep in our room from working at night. It can be anywhere from 20 minutes to 2.5 hours 2-3 times a day and she always has her soother, a fans and waves sound machine as white noise in the background. Often she will fight going down, and we will end up going for a drive as she is guaranteed to fall asleep and generally that runs into school pick up time for big sister. Between the ever changing schedule of kindergarten gradual entry for her big sister and anticipating this 2 week trip to Ontario, I hadn’t put a ton of effort into a schedule but will definitely be focusing more on routine when we return at the end of this week!

Personality
She started to play strange a bit right around 5 1/2 months and we were really concerned about how that might translate with meeting all our big families over our holiday trip. Luckily it seemed to fade just when we arrived, so we’ll see how things go back in BC. In general she is a super smiley, happy baby. She’s very social and loves to be around people big and small. Her sister is her favorite person and always looks for her right when she wakes up and whenever she hears footsteps in the hall. She doesn’t like being cooped up in a car/carrier/exersaucer for too long, she’s a free range baby who needs lots of time to explore. Especially when it’s naked time! She loves the water whether bath or pool. Whenever she’s fussy or downright screaming, going outside will always calm her down.

Likes
Soother
Singing to sleep
Pattycake
Tummy time
Crawling
Mirrors
Eating
Playing in the piano
Walking in the carrier
Rolling in the grass
Swinging and sliding in the park
Gymboree
Bath
Swimming
Dancing
Peekaboo!
Tickles under the armpit and on belly
Being outside
Drumming

Dislikes
Stroller
Car seat (sometimes)
Bumbo/high chair
Being held in horizontal position
Being held facing in
Being in arms when tired

Language
By far my favorite and most momentous milestone this month came right on her 7 month “birthday” when she said “mama” with intention and understanding. I was floored!!! This past month has been a lot of sound development “ma, ba, da, cuh, ga, pa, ta, ya” have all come out often accompanied by high pitched cooing and blowing raspberries. She is definitely a chatterbox! Having been visiting family she has been getting passed around a lot and spending extra time with daddy too, so I think she’s been missing her mama time. This particular day I had spent the whole day with her, and much of it one on one so she was as happy as a clam. When I passed her off for a few minutes to do something in an adjacent room, I could see her looking around “mama? Mama?” Specific breaks between words, not just one long string of mamamamamama like in the past. Then I came back to her and she smiled the brightest smile and said “mama!” I melted 😀
Additionally she is responding to the “all done” sign. She likes to gobble up her food, but then gets very fussy when she’s don’t eating. Or when she’s in her exersaucer or jolly jumper and has had enough she starts fussing. The minute I sign and say “all done”, she calms right down.

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Its been a wild ride, I can’t wait to see what comes up next! What has your little one been doing this month?

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