Samantha's 11 Month Update!

One more month. Just one more month until this baby girl is one year old! I can't believe how quickly this first year has flown by. 

Height/Weight: According to our home scale and measuring tape, Samantha is 19lbs 5oz (44%) and 27.5in (31%) long! She has not grown much at all this past month, but I remember this being about the time that Vincent slowed down as well, so I'm not concerned!

Daily: So lately, Samantha's daytime routine has been very sporadic. Because of teething and bad nights, her nap schedule during the day is completely out of whack and I haven't been pushing terribly hard to fix it, because we're all tired and the schedule doesn't seem to be helping much. We still get up at around 8AM, but some mornings, following really rough nights, we will get up closer to 8:30 or 9. I nurse her first thing as always, then get her changed and dressed before getting Vincent up (he is always already awake at this point, playing in his bed with this stuffed animals) and getting him dressed for the day. Breakfast is anywhere between 8:30 and 9:30, then we have playtime until Samantha is ready for her first nap. Right now, it's been between 11 and 12. I've really been trying just to read her cues and go with the flow, to take a break from the strict schedule, but I kind of feel like I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't. :/ 
Samantha still very much enjoys playing with cars and trucks, the play kitchen, her little people house and this American Idol McDonald's toy that plays music! She pushes the button and dances. xD She's been taking a huge liking to stuffed animals and dolls lately and likes to snuggle them and hug them! :)

Sleep: I was so tempted just to leave the same text from the previous month, because absolutely nothing has changed. Sleep has been lacking big time and I am beyond certain that the majority of it is due to teething. Exactly the same as last month and the month prior, Samantha has been completely refusing a second nap, no matter how hard I've tried to push it. Sleep at night has been as bad as the previous month - I will either put her down successfully at around 8 and then she'll wake 20-30 minutes later, or I am unable to get her down at all and she will be up until around midnight or later. Sometimes she'll even wake up in the middle of the night and not go back to sleep until long after the sun has risen. It's been extremely challenging lately and Mike and I are very sleep deprived. But the fact that she's teething helps me to emotionally deal with it better, since I know that she's hurting and just having a hard time sleeping. The upside is that almost every day, she will take one long, solid 2-3 hour nap. On rare occasions she won't go down at all, but thankfully that isn't the norm!

Building blocks past midnight! One of the many activities we
do when she's refusing to sleep.

Eating: I could not be more happy that we're still breastfeeding and going strong! I wanted SO badly to breastfeed Vincent until he was at least a year old and it was hard when we had to stop. Teething has made it a little challenging lately, because she will gnaw sometimes, which is (as you can likely imagine) pretty painful! But it's not as bad as I expected it would be. She is now nursing every 3 hours or so during the day - I kind of go with the flow and feed on demand. She eats solids 2-3 times per day and is doing very well with that! Her favorite food EVER is mashed potatoes, especially with gravy!! I always feed it to her off my plate and have to get a second helping, because she eats about half of mine. Haha! She also really likes refried beans with cheese on Taco Tuesdays. For snacks, she loves puffs! I've offered her about every flavor combo they make and she loves them all. 

Sizes: Samantha is still in 12 month clothing and likely will be for a bit still! I've opened the front snaps on all of her cloth diapers this past month, but she is still in a size 4 disposable diaper when we use those occasionally.

Milestones and Changes:

• Samantha has FOUR teeth now!! This past month, both of her top front teeth have popped through! It seems like she is working on some more bottom teeth right now, but it's super hard to check her due to her gum pain. It's crazy to think that at this exact age, Vincent got his first tooth and Samantha already has so many! 
• She has started giving the biggest and most loving hugs!! She will grip onto you ever so tightly! Here she is giving brother a big hug:

• She is walking assisted, holding onto my finger with one hand! I swear it won't be much longer before she is walking.

• Samantha is a total and complete daredevil. The other day, she climbed over the back of Vincent's couch and went face first into the corner of a book. So she's got a huge red mark on her cheek right next to her eye. I swear if either of the kids is going to need to go to the emergency room, she will likely be the first! She is a LOT less cautious than Vincent was at this age and still is!

• She has started saying MAMA! Oh my goodness it was like music to my ears the first time she said it!! :D I have been waiting for almost 6 months to hear her say it!!
• Samantha picks up anything that resembles a phone and says "heyo?"! She just barely started doing it and it is the most precious thing ever!

Samantha's 7 Month Update

Height/Weight: At her appointment today, Samantha was 17lbs 9oz (63%), 27.5 long (86%) with a head circumference of 43.94cm (76%). So she's grown 2 inches in 2 months! 

Daily: Samantha wakes up between 8 and 9AM. Same as the last few updates, I nurse her in bed once she's awake, then dress and change her. Once we've gotten Vincent up, I take her into the living room for tummy time while Mike gets Vincent's breakfast started. Samantha spends the majority of her awake time on the big quilt in the living room rolling around and playing with toys! She's trying SO hard to crawl on her knees! Right now, she will roll around the room or kind of inch herself forward by leaning side to side and stretching, to get to where she'd like to go. She loves playing with her toys (especially the noisy ones!!), watching Vincent play and playing with Mommy and Daddy! Some days, when Mike wants to play video games, he will take her with him and put her on the bed next to him and she plays until she falls asleep! :D The sit me up seat, the bouncy seat and the swing have sort of become neglected. She prefers to be on the floor or in the horse bouncer, which we dug out of the garage for her to use! She has so much fun bouncing around in it and playing with the toys attached to the front! She sits on the floor a lot as well and needs no assistance! I often set her in front of the Zany Zoo and let her open and close the little doors and spin the letters, which she really enjoys!  

Sleep: Oh sleep. It has not been great lately. She has been going through another pretty gnarly sleep regression! Last week, she was waking every half hour crying, not even wanting to eat!! :/ It has been getting better though. She is taking a decent nap at around noon, usually around two hours long! She very rarely takes a second nap, but if she does, it's only about half an hour. If it's longer, I make sure she's awake before 6PM, so it doesn't mess with bedtime. I was putting her down at around 8, at the same time Vincent goes to bed, but she ended up just treating it like a nap and waking up between 15 minutes to an hour later, then would stay up half the night. So I started getting her ready for bed and feeding her around that time, but leaving the light on and letting her play for a little while afterward, until she was very obviously tired. That's been working a lot better!

Eating: Still breastfeeding and going strong! She eats every 2-3 hours during the day and every 2-4 hours at night. I honestly don't remember the last time she went more than four hours at night! Haha! I haven't pumped once since we moved to New Mexico and don't plan to any time soon, since we haven't needed to give any bottles. We did start solids last month, but she's acting like she might be cutting a tooth, so it's been very difficult to get her to eat lately. So we've taken a little bit of a break! We've been doing a mix of baby led weaning (giving her large pieces of vegetables, fruit or shredded cheese) and spoon feeding with homemade or store bought puree. She does LOADS better with being spoon fed than Vincent did! He flat out refused to let me spoon feed him, whereas Samantha actually opens her mouth, wanting what's on the spoon!

Feeding herself squash! She always makes faces at first, but so far, she's liked everything we've given her!

Eating some cucumber

Sizes: Samantha is in 9 month clothing now! I do still squeeze her into some 6 month clothing, but for the most part, she's grown out of it. Especially since we started cloth diapering this past month! (I'll be making a separate post on this soon!) The diapers make her butt super chunky and it's hard to get pants on her sometimes! xD We're still occasionally using disposable diapers at night, which are a size 4. The only issue we're having with 9 month clothing is the length of her footie pajamas, especially the fleece ones! Her legs are short, so her feet don't reach the footies. And when they are in them, you can fold the feet over, because her feet are tiny! :D

Milestones and Changes:

• First solids; Avocado! She made a few faces at first, but ended up loving it!

• First time in the horse bouncer! Comfy enough to nap in, apparently! xD

• First time in cloth! 

• First time meeting family members: Great Grandma and Papa, Great Aunt Loretta and Uncle Mike, Cousins Tiffany, Ben and Addison and Aunt Pam and Cousin Charlie! We had a great time visiting everyone this past month!

• Samantha learned to clap!! It is the SWEETEST thing - I can't even stand it!! <3

• First time "army crawling"

• First time at a wedding

• First time meeting Auntie Lia and Auntie Hanna! 

• First sip of wine! TOTALLY kidding - but this picture was too cute not to share :D 

Samantha's 4 Month Update!

Height/Weight: According to our home scale and measuring tape, Samantha is 15lbs 9oz (88%), 25 inches long (78%) with a head circumference of 42cm (78%)! She's gained some height in this past month, but still has her chunkiness! :D <3 Her next appointment isn't until next month, since her shots are off by a month. I'll be excited to see how much she weighs at that point! :D

Daily: Our days have been pretty hectic lately! We are going to be moving at the end of the month and I also started up a new business from home, so everything, including daily routines and schedules, are all over the place at the moment! 
Samantha is always the first one awake, anywhere between 7:30 and 8:30. I usually nurse her first, then she spends some time babbling and squealing on the bed, while I work on waking up haha! I then change her diaper and outfit (NEVER anything white, because she likes to have a blowout at around 11AM haha!) and put her in her swing for a little bit, while making coffee either tending to the dogs or getting Vince up and his breakfast ready. We admittedly have been slacking on tummy time a bit this past month, but Samantha has rolled from her back to her tummy several times unassisted in the past few weeks! Her favorite things to do are snuggle, sit up, watch Vincent play and interact with him, play with Mommy and Daddy and play with her toys. She still ADORES her little horse lovey and cuddles him constantly, as well as other stuffed animals that we've given her to hold. She's become very talkative and loves to giggle, coo, squeal and blow raspberries!
She still doesn't have a set schedule, it's more approximate. We just kind of go with the flow and it seems to work well for her. But I do try to get her down for a nap at the same time as Vincent every day, since that's the one time of day that all is quiet and she is able to sleep without her brother waking her up! We aim to have her down for the night around the same time as Vincent or before 9, otherwise she gets very cranky and overtired. Mike takes care of the majority of Vincent's bedtime routine while I get Samantha changed and dressed for bed and he takes her while I sing to Vincent.  

Sleep: Sleep has been okay. She is definitely going through the 4 month sleep regression period, but thankfully it's nowhere near as bad as Vincent's was! She has been waking up several times per night to nurse, but generally falls right back to sleep. It's been easiest to co-sleep lately, since she has grown out of her napper in the pack n play and we won't get a chance to set up the crib until after the move. She really seems to like the closeness and I definitely don't mind the snuggles, even if it means waking up with a crick in my neck haha! She's also sort of in a swaddle transition period. She hasn't been liking to be completely swaddled lately, so I use a velcro Swaddle Me right under her arms, so that her bottom half is covered and she doesn't get cold. She sleeps best on her side, with her little arms outstretched by her face. <3 I think a huge part of is that she is unable to suck her fingers when she's swaddled.
Naptime - oy. She is not the best napper, honestly! I try to have her down for at least one nap per day, but my goal is to get her to take three, even if they're short. One around 10 or 11, one around 2 or 3 and another at around 5. It seems like she sleeps a lot better at night when she has taken some good naps, which is exactly the way Vincent was. It works best to feed her in the side-lying position in the middle of our bed, then sneak away once she's fallen asleep. 

Eating: I've continued to nurse on demand this past month. I feel like it puts a lot less stress on both of us and doesn't cause me to worry about my supply. She's still gaining really well and producing plenty of full diapers, so I'm not concerned in the slightest! :) I've been trying to offer a little more frequently lately though, since it's become so hot and I don't want her getting dehydrated. She hasn't had a bottle this month and I haven't bothered with pumping. I may go back to it for a couple of days once the milk in the freezer is getting close to expiring, just to switch it out with fresh milk. I think it's pretty safe to say that her latch issue is completely non-existent at this point! I very rarely hear a clicking sound when she's eating and she doesn't get nearly as gassy as she used to. UNLESS she decides that she needs to be sucking her thumb while she's nursing, which she constantly does. It's pretty funny actually! xD Spitting up is still an issue, but I think part of it is due to fast letdown and her drinking so fast! 

Sizes: Samantha is pretty much exclusively in 6 month clothing. There are only a few 3 month outfits that still fit! She's getting close to needing size 3 diapers, too! I wish she'd slow down - she's getting way too big! Vincent is too! :(

Milestones and Changes:

• First 4th of July!

• First roll over from back to tummy
• Matching outfits with Daddy!

• Sat in the high chair for the first time, to snack on some pretend chips! xD She loves sitting in it so much. And it's super convenient for me when I'm working on orders, because she's able to be right there next to me and see what I'm doing!

• This girl LOVES to suck her fingers. She still refuses a binky and I gave up trying to offer one quite a while ago. Thank goodness we bought around 20, because Vince to this day still loves his haha! 

• Sitting up is Samantha's favorite thing. She likes seeing everything that's going on and likes to hold her head up! So she's been favoring sitting in the boppy, the sit me up seat and the high chair!