Fun with an 8 month old!

I am having so much fun being home with Quinn this summer. I'm so sad that we only have two weeks left together. The summer has gone by so fast! So far, I love the 8 month stage. She has so much personality. She is crawling!! It's not perfect, but she is definitely getting around. There now isn't a safe spot in my house. She is able to go across the room before I even know it.

She loves going after my glasses, phone, and the dogs. She gets so excited when the dogs come around. She starts jumping up and down, and then she slaps them on the head. Ace doesn't really mind. He just lets her pull his ears, lip, and fur. Eddie isn't as much a fan.

 She still loves to pull herself up on everything. She was trying so hard to pull herself up on our chair the other day.

I caught her pulling the bottom drawer open on our chest in the den, and then she tried to pull herself up on it. We are in trouble now. It is definitely time to start baby proofing the house. We lowered the crib just in time. She now wakes up and then stands in her crib before making any noise. I find her looking at me each time I go in to get her.
She finally started holding her bottle on her own. This really hasn't been her fault since we hadn't used that many bottles at home, and I never really made her. She has been able to do it for a couple of months, but why do it if Mama will do it for you? Now that she is holding it on her own, I like to title the following picture, FREEDOM!! If I knew how amazing it would be for her to hold her own bottle, I would have made her do it a long time ago.

Freedom!!

She is such a good eater. She has been eating watermelon, avocado, eggs, english peas, sweet potatoes, squash, broccoli, cheese, and cheerios all by herself. I'm so proud of my big girl! She loves to prop one foot up on the high chair while eating. It cracks me up.

Monkey Toes

 One of my best friends, Jennifer, came and visited this week for our 30th birthdays. It was so much fun to see her, and it was perfect timing since John was away for a military training. We had a nice birthday breakfast! Even Quinn had a couple pieces of the cake.

 We had a fun few days. We walked the bridge, downtown, and we all went to the beach. It was Quinn's first time at the beach, and I'm not so sure she is a big fan. She wanted to eat the sand, but she definitely looked cute while hanging out on the beach.

We are now going to Mississippi soon. I'm so excited for everyone to see Quinn. The last time we were home was Easter, and she has changed so much since then. Now we just need to figure out the best time to make the 9hr drive with an 8 month old. I'm voting for night time because I can always drink coffee, and it's much better than an unhappy baby:)

7 to 8 months old

I still cannot believe that Quinn is 8 months old already! I meant to write her 7th month post before I went on my surprise birthday trip, but I didn't make it. More on the trip later...now for some highlights over the past month.

Up until right before she turned 7 months old, Quinn was not a fan of baths. Her Nana got her a seat to sit in for Easter, but that only helped for about a week or so. All of that changed once we put a mat in her tub and let her just sit with her toys.

Now she LOVES bath time!! She turned 8 months this past week, and her new favorite thing to do in the tub is to use the side to stand up. She is so focused! I've tried to distract her with toys, water, singing, but all she wants is to pull herself up! I've bathed her standing the past 2 nights.

Since John and I both have very curly hair, I knew the curl was coming. It showed up a few weeks after she turned 7 months, and it is right on top of her head!

I could not get it to lay down for about a week, and her new nickname at daycare was "alphalpha." Luckily, I figured out that it will lay down as long as I brush it right when she gets out of the bath. I know I'm going to have my hands full once it gets thicker, but I have 30  years of training on dealing with curly hair.

I am now home with her during my summer break, and it is amazing! She will be in the class above the newborns when we go back, and it was sad to leave her friends. Luckily, a few will be moving up with her!

Last day of daycare before summer

Her daycare providers were trying to get her to take better naps in her crib the few weeks before summer break. There was a little tough love along with putting a blanket over the side of her crib. She will sleep as long as doesn't realize she is missing anything. We definitely have a social butterfly on our hands!! She will not go to sleep if she thinks she is going to miss anything, and she gets so upset right before she gives in and falls alseep. She also started holding her bottle the last week of daycare. We don't give her many bottles at home, and I haven't worked on her much with this. We have been using her sippy cup for the past month, and she does great with drinking water from it.

On June 16th, I noticed that she had gotten her first tooth! Then I realized that it was actually two bottom front teeth that had broken through!! One day I will get a picture! It hasn't happened yet. She is still teething pretty badly. She has woken up a lot over the past week in pain. We have learned that frozen waffles help:)

Frozen fruit helps a lot too. I'll be glad when we get a little relief from teething. When she is not teething so badly, she usually sleeps well. We still can't get her to drop the 2am feeding, but I've gotten used to it. I keep telling myself that there will be a day that I miss this snuggle time, but I could use a few more nights with 8 consecutive hours of sleep:).

We have made new friends! One of my good friends, Laura D., set us up with a couple of her friends that just moved to Charleston. They have an adorable little girl named, Wylie, and we went swimming in their pool a couple of weeks ago. It was Quinn's first time in the pool, and she loved it! She just kept kicking and trying to blow bubbles in the water like she does in her bath.

She is so close to crawling! She teases us by getting on all fours and rocking back and forth. Not being able to crawl has not stopped her from getting where she wants to go at all. She rolls or scoots, and I now feel like she isn't safe anywhere that is elevated. She goes across the bed in seconds, and she also is out of her bumbo seat before I can turn around. Now she has her own space on the floor that is blocked from the dogs. Even that space isn't safe anymore, her new favorite thing to do is pull herself up to a standing position. She tries to pull herself up on everything! I caught her trying to pull herself up on our fireplace this week, and she was so excited to be standing in her pack n play yesterday.

 This is what I walked in on in her nursery after I got her dressed for the 4th.

I think it is time to lower the crib. She looked so cute on the 4th. I loved the little outfit that we had for her. I hate that the only good picture I got was with my Iphone, and it is a little blurry.

You can see the little spot on her cheek. We learned a couple of months ago that she has a bad reaction to bug bites just like her Nana and Daddy, but this was different. About a week before the 4th, I noticed this awful raised area on her leg and face when we woke up that morning. The spot was rough and almost looked like a burn on her leg. I took her to the doctor, and it was just an infection due to a bug bite. After a week of topical antibiotics, we could actually see the bug bite on her leg, and it is finally starting to go away. She is weighing in at 19 pounds 5 ounces.

She turned 8 months old this past Tuesday, and the best picture I got was her in her new onesie from my cruise.

We started more finger foods over the last month, and she loves the baby puffs and little munchies. I tried some steamed vegetables a couple of weeks ago with her, and she was not interested. This week, I gave her some steamed zucchini and broccoli with garlic, and she loved it!! She actually wanted more.

I've been very ready to give her real food for so long. I'm so excited that she is finally eating other foods than her baby food.

It is crazy how fast she is growing up. I feel like it is something new every day. She has picked up on the fact that I put my hand on our stair railing when I go up the stairs. Now she sticks her hand out to hold on too. It is so cute. She also knows to stick her hand under the faucet when we go to the sink to wash her hands when they are sticky.

I can't believe that I've almost been out on summer break a month. I will be back to work before I know it. I'm loving every minute of being home with our munchkin.  Daddy had her for the 5 days that I was on my cruise, and we came home to a spotless house!! It let me know that I'm slacking:) He is such a great father! It was perfect bonding time for the two of them. Next post will be about my trip.

Our Jumping Bean and Drama Queen

Here are a couple of videos from this past week.

Quinn has really started to love her jumparoo. Thanks Aunt Jessica for letting her silly mama know how to lower the settings.

She has also started this great fake cry. It sounds so bad. Her daycare thought that something was wrong when she did it with them the first time. Then they realized that all she wanted was for them to hold her. There are no tears, and she recovers very quickly.  She was trying to take her spoon from me while I was feeding her. Remember..no tears, and it's all fake.

I think we should sign her up for acting lessons! She is such a mess. I love every minute with her, and I am counting down the days until I'm off for summer break! I just have one more week. Then I get to spend the rest of the summer with my baby girl. I did grab her during my lunch break this week. That is one benefit to having her across the street from my office. We had a lot of fun in the park.

I cannot believe that she will be 7 months old this Sunday! It has gone by way too fast. I am enjoying every minute of it.

6 Months update and Memorial Weekend!

Happy Memorial Day to everyone!! I am so thankful for the men and women that have served our country!
We had a great weekend with my parents! They came for the long weekend, and it was so nice to have them an extra day!

We have decided that Quinn looks so much like my mother. I am going to post some of her baby pictures soon to compare, but they definitely resemble each other. I miss them so much. It was so nice to have them in town. They were great and gave John and I a date night downtown on Saturday! Quinn loves her Nana and Paw Paw!

Quinn had her 6 month doctor appointment this week. Here she is before the shots:)

Our big girl weighs 17 pounds 4 ounces. She is 26 1/2 inches long, and she is in the 67% for height, weight, and head circumference. She's a proportional baby:)
She loves to blow raspberries with her mouth or on our arms. She started saying "da da" this past weekend. Her sweet "da da" was up with her at 2 in the morning a few morning this week due to what we hope is a quick growth spurt, and I think it helped to make it easier when she would look up at him to say "da da." I still swear that, "hey" was her first word. She started making that sound after we would say, "hey" to her when she was about 4 months old. She loves vegetables over fruits. Sweet Potatoes are her favorite, and green beans come in close second. She started making a, "mmmmm," sound after each bite this week. It's so cute to hear.  I made a couple of fresh purees at home last weekend, and she was not a fan. They were fruits though. I'm going to try some vegetables next time. Hopefully, it isn't my cooking:)  She has started showing a little seperation anxiety this past week. It was just a couple of times at daycare and home. I think it is because she is tired this week. She just seemed to want her mama. She seemed better by the end of the week when I found her playing with her best friend at daycare the other day.

I'm so glad that they will go through all the stages at daycare together. They are only 12 days apart, and they are right with each other in milestones. We need to schedule a play date with her parents over the summer since Quinn will be gone for 6 weeks.

We are having a blast with our little baby girl. I can't believe how quickly she is growing! I am definitely counting down the days until I'm out for summer. It is going to be so much fun to spend 6 weeks with her!

6 months and Mother's Day weekend!

My sweet girl turned 6 months this past Thursday!! The day after she started sitting up!

This was our action shot before we had to leave for work and daycare. As usual, we were running a little late:) More 6 month pictures to come after this weekend.

I got my first Mother's Day gift from Quinn yesterday! The daycare was so sweet to make them for all the mothers.

This makes me so happy!! I'm excited about this weekend! We are going to go for a walk downtown today, and then my sweet husband made reservations at Husk for tomorrow after church!! It couldn't be better.

Sitting Up all by Herself!!

This happened tonight!!

The daycare and I have been saying for weeks that it would be any day before she sat up on her own. It finally happened tonight! As you can hear, I was very excited!!  This, along with puttng her toes in her mouth, have been the fun new things to report.

Fun parent moment

So this is not a current picture of the current movies out at the theatre, but I didn't take a picture the other day.

John and I were driving by the movie theatre the other day, and we stopped at the red light before it. We both looked at the movies that were playing, and I think we only knew what half of them were..lol! There was a time that we knew everything about every movie months before they came out in theatre. Now, I couldn't tell you what is out or what is coming out. I'm sure that it will only get worse, but I'm ok with my new priorities.

PS. I ordered my mother's day gift this week! I'm getting an Ergo Sport baby carrier, and I'm so excited. I also ordered the  Baby Led Weaning book to try with Quinn over the summer. We'll see how it goes!

5 months and the month of April:)

I know..I know..Where have I been??!!? We have had a busy last few months, and time has definitely gotten away from me. I'm going to start out of order with my new posts. We are going to go with her 5th month, and all the fun things that have been happening this April. We started the month by going to Mississippi for my spring break. John had to go to Florida with his unit for the week, and it worked out that we could make the drive together. Let me start by saying that driving in December with a 5 week old was a little easier than with a 5 month old:) She needed a little more entertaining this time around, but overall, she was a trooper. She got fussy around the 8th hour of the trip on the way there. The only things that calmed her down were both of us singing to her and watching the Peanut Butter Jelly app dance on the Ipad. I am ok with never hearing that song again!
John left for Florida the Saturday before Easter. Quinn and I spent Easter in Macon. It was so much fun to see everyone. Most of our family hadn't seen Quinn since Christmas. Here is a picture of a very happy Nana with her grandbabies on Easter morning:

Happy Nana

Happy Paw Paw:)

We tried to take some pictures of the cousins together after church. Reese LOVES her cousin Quinn.

After church we went to Columbus to see Jessica and Taylor's new house, and we ate lunch at Taylor's parent's. It was a perfect afternoon!

Quinn turned 5 months old the Tuesday that we were in Mississippi, and I decided to start her on solids. Avocado was her first food. She did not like it that morning when I tried to give it to her. I don't think she knew what to do with it, but she ate all of it later that night. She would grab the spoon out of my hand to feed herself.

I really wanted to wait until she was 6 months old, but she was showing all the signs. The biggest change was that she started waking up every 3 hours again. She has been such a good sleeper that I knew it was time to add some food. Plus her Paw Paw decided to give her banana pudding on Easter while I was out of the room. I came back, and she had it all over her face. She was very excited about the food though. It's funny to think about it now because bananas are the one thing that she hates to eat. I gave her some fresh bananas this morning, and she actually gagged! She gets that from her Daddy:) The only way that I've gotten her to eat them is mixed with her fresh avacodo. She actually ate a whole avacodo and half a banana at one time this week at daycare! I don't know where she put it. Her favorite food is sweet pototoes so far. She is not that big of a fan of fruits unless you mix them with rice cereal or a veggie.
Back to our trip.. She got to see her Uncle Jay while we were home. He is in Nashville for an internship now, and we haven't seen him since Christmas. She also got to see her great Uncle Bill and Gaga.

We had some professional pictures taken on Tuesday that week. I cannot wait to see them!! After that we went back to Meridian to visit with Jena, Will, Mary Evans, Cat, and Grandad.  It was so much fun to visit with them! Jena is due in October, and she looks great! I cannot wait to know if I'm getting another niece or nephew! Jena, Will and Mary Evans came to Charleston for a visit this past February, and I will post those pictures on the 3-4month update:) Mary Evans is SO cute with Quinn!

Happy Grandad!!

Her Cat has the magic touch. Every time she would hold Quinn, she would just fall asleep in her arms. She is also so sweet because she held Quinn for around a 3 hour nap one one morning. Our 16 pound girl can get a little heavy.
The last weekend of the trip was busy with getting everything ready for Quinn's Baptism at the Methodist church in Macon. It was very special to me to have my daughter baptized in the Church that I was raised. I did not realize how special the moment was going to be until we were all there standing in front of the church. I pray that we raise Quinn to know God and to reflect Him in all that she does in life. The morning went by so quickly that I forgot to ask everyone to stay after the service to take a group pictures. So...we have some snap shots of the day. One of the most wonderful moments of the day was seeing Bigdaddy come into the church. He suffered a stroke around 2 weeks before that day, and he had been in Jackson in a rehabilitation center. However, he said he was not missing his great granddaughter's day. It was wonderful having him there!

We tried to get a good group shot of the 3 of us. I didn't notice that Quinn was blinking, or I would have tried to get another picture. At least we have one of the 3 of us though.

The best part about the Baptism was that Quinn slept through the entire service! She actually started snoring when Brother Andy was holding her. The water on her head did not bother her at all. When Brother Andy took her around the church to show her to the congregation, she put her hand in front of her face so that she could still sleep.

Quinn has two godparents, Heath Jordan and Kim Bowers. They were both able to make the Baptism, and it was so great to see them! Quinn is so fortunate to have them in her life. They were so sweet and got her a beautiful cross necklace for this special day!

Cat and Grandad got her a bracelet with her name and the date of the service on it. It matches Mary Evans' bracelet from her Christening. We tried to get a picture of the two bracelets together.

That pretty much sums up the trip. We have been back in Charleston for 2 weeks. We are now back into our work routine during the week. I am counting down the days until my summer break. I cannot wait to be able to be home with Quinn all day! This stage is so much fun, and her little personality is really starting to come out.  She has just started blowing bubbles with her mouth,and she thinks it is hilarious. She is so close to being able to sit up on her own. I feel like every day is something new.  She is so long in the torso that she is already in some of her 6-9 month clothes. I still cannot believe how fast she is growing. It is hard for me to believe all the milestones we are going to go through over the next 6 months with crawling, walking, and talking! I cannot wait! I have dowloaded all the pictures from the past few months, and I will be making another large post for her 3-4 month update.

The Latest

The second week of work and daycare went great!
Here is Quinn with her sweet daycare providers:

Miss Jameka

Quinn was a little fussy when we tried to take this picture. I need to get a better one of her. Miss Jameka is great! She is due with her 4th child in April, and you cannot even tell that she is pregnant!

Miss Candace

Miss Candace loves to snuggle with Quinn. She won't let me put her in the crib when we get there in the mornings. She just wants to hold her and rock her:)

Quinn had a little trouble sleeping the first week of daycare. She would just take 2-3 20 minute catnaps. She has always taken short naps, but she usually sleeps a little longer than that. She is still sleeping great at night though! I think it was just a combination of the new environment and sounds. This week she is finally sleeping a whole hour in a half in the afternoon. This is how I found her last Friday when I went to pick her up.

Poor baby girl was all tuckered out. I cannot talk about how much I love our daycare enough. It gives me such piece of mind knowing that she is in good hands.
Quinn has officially outgrown her Puj tub. She has been taking baths in the sink in this tub, but she is ready for her own bath in the bathtub. Her sweet Daddy bathed her in her first tub bath last week.

She loved it! She loves her baths. You just have to keep her warm:) She officially turned 3 months old last Thursday. Here is a picture from that day.

3 Months!

Of course she had to have a valentine's day outfit this week.

I love leg warmers on her. She just looks so cute!

She has graduated to the big Dr. Brown bottles since she is now at around 4.5 ounces a bottle. They just look huge! She was starting to try to hold the smaller 4 ounce bottles, but I'm not sure she knows what to do with this new bottle.

We are getting excited about this weekend. Quinn's Aunt Jena, Uncle Will, and cousin Mary Evans are coming to visit Charleston for the first time. We are going to have so much fun. I cannot wait to see the cousins together.