Marigold, Seven Months

WEIGHT
19 pounds of pure, wonderful chubbiness.

HEIGHT
At her 6-month appointment on October 8, she was 27.75 inches, aka 96th percentile!

^^Our first attempt at her 7-month pics, in which she would only stay on her back if she was distracted by her brothers' cars.

SLEEP
Sleep has been bonkers amazing the past month!! We have a loose schedule everyday, and I can't even tell you how happy I am that we sorta have a schedule to the sleep madness finally!

Wake up around 8am.
First nap around 10:30am.
Second nap around 2:30pm.
Get ready for bed around 7:30pm.
In crib by 8pm.
Asleep by 8:15pm.

Occasionally there's a middle-of-the-night feeding or an early morning wake-up around 6am. But most nights, it's 11+ hours of blissful, uninterrupted sleep for Miss Marigold. We're here for it.

Other things to note about sleep. It did take a whole month for the naps to work themselves out, but she's officially taking a 1.5-to-2.5-hour nap in the mornings and a 1-to-2-hour nap in the afternoons. When we started with the schedule, sometimes she'd take a dinky 45-minute nap in the morning and that would throw everything off and result in a 3-nap day. I'm sooo thankful to finally be past that! The only downside is that my kids trade naps all day long now. Margo naps in the morning and late afternoon, Jude in the middle of the day at 1:30pm, and John Paul just officially outgrew the nap. But I'm not complaining! It feels so good to have well-napped, well-slept kids and parents.

FIRSTS THIS MONTH
-Army crawling SO fast across the whole house.
-Absolutely trying to real crawl. She can get up on all fours and rock, but hasn't moved the hands or knees forward yet. SO SOON!
-Eating all the big girl foods! More on that in a sec.
-Consistently sleeping through the night! *happiest of all happy dances*
-Babbling "dada!" Her favorite version is using her high-pitched screamy voice.
-Trying to copy sounds we're making, like shhhhhh, and gestures, like fist bumps and "all done" hands.
-Repositioning from sitting to laying on the floor with relative ease, although there is still the occasional head bonk when she doesn't have full control.
-Popping her first tooth! And it seems the second is soon to follow.

NICKNAMES
Margo, Margs, Sis, and Margsy are the most used.

OTHER THINGS TO NOTE
-On the first day of her 7th month, we arrived in Rhode Island for a one-week trip to visit my family. My siblings hadn't met her yet, nor my extended family, so it was great fun to show her off all week. The boys obviously loved the adventure as well. And because we had gotten her on a sleep schedule the two weeks before we left, her sleep was basically unaffected, even with all the traveling and sleeping in new environments. So as it turns out, she's an awesome travel baby. See following pics for some of my favorite moments in RI.

^^ My sister made this troll doll hat for Margo and it's hilariously cute.

^^These "baby holders" in public restrooms are quite hilarious and possibly not all that safe. 🙈

-Marigold got to start solid foods this month! Her first food was cucumber, and from there we've given her little bits of what we're eating, so long as it's not too salty. She's tried avocado, bread, carrots, zucchini, squash, mushrooms, chicken, steak, eggs, apples, strawberries, hummus, peanut butter, and so on. Of all my kiddos, she's figured out food the fastest. She's not swallowing much yet, but she's so excited to try, can basically pick up and get anything she wants up to her mouth, and she's getting enough to change the consistency of her diapers. Eep! It's so fun to watch her explore this new world!

-Sis continues to love playing on the floor, and now that she can army crawl, she loves it even more. She will move all the way across a room just to get her hands on a toy. I've even seen her "chase" after John Paul, who was crawling around and away from her. It was the most adorable game of tag I've ever seen.

-Miss Margo is still sleeping in our closet, but will soon be updated to her own bedroom. Our hold-up is that we wanted to get her room painted before we move her over. So we've been mulling over colors for weeks, and finally settled on the perfect pink for her ceiling and a creamy white for her walls. I'll be sure to include some pictures in a later post, once it's finished.

-Marigold has had croup over the past week. John Paul had it first, probably picked up from school, then Jude had it, and now Margo is finally recovering from it. She has sounded pitiful, like an old smoker when she babbles and cries. But she was never miserable, and it didn't interrupt her sleep much at all. What a trooper!

^^ Marigold really interacting with her cousin, Gus, for the first time. He's only 4 months younger than her, and we live 5 minutes down the street from them. They're going to be thick as thieves.

-The boys continue to enjoy having their little sis around. There are certainly moments where they don't enjoy how much of our attention she requires. And there are occasional comments like, "I want to throw her away." Yikes! But more often than not, they love to do things to make her giggle, and hold her, and play on the floor with her, so I'm almost positive they will be theee best of friends, as soon as she stops demanding so much of mommy's attention. ;)