Hollon Elizabeth - 7 Months

7 Months Old Recap:

Likes: attention, sleeping in mommy & daddy's bed, kids (especially big brother & cousins), mam pacifier, clapping, playing peek-a-boo, remotes, cell phones & baby wipes packaging

Dislikes: being ignored or being left in her bed when crying

Milestones: This month, Hollon started clapping, she starting eating baby food (other than cereal), and we introduced the sippy cup (she basically just chews on the nipple). She has started crawling, even though it is a half crawl, half wiggle and half dive. She can get across the room pretty quickly though. We also ditched the huge infant tub (yeah!) and she now just sits in the bath tub.

Sleep*: Let's just have a moment of silence. I'll discuss our struggles with sleeping below. She does take 2 really good naps during the day. One at 8:00 & one at 11:00. She usually falls asleep on the way to pick Jake up from school, but he is so loud getting in the car, she wakes up. We are trying to put her down between 7:00-8:00 at night. She sleeps with her pacifier, her lamb luvee and a stuffed bunny. She likes to fall asleep to music playing.

Eat: Eating initially started out slow, but she seems to really enjoy it now. She liked sweet potatoes, apples, and squash. She hated peas. She was so-so about carrots and bananas. We've started mixing and matching ingredients now. She is still breastfed. She eats at 7 & 10 AM and 1, 4 & 7 PM. And then a midnight or early morning snack here and there.

Appearance: Her hair is fascinating to me. Sometimes you look at it and it will almost look dark brown. But then in the sunlight, it looks so light & blond. You can tell the days she hasn't had a bath, because it looks darker and lays flatter. After it has been washed, it looks lighter and sticks up everywhere. Her longest hair is on top. Her eyes are super blue. And she has chunky cheeks, belly and thighs. Seeing her chunky little legs in a bubble suit will make your heart melt. She has 2 little baby teeth on bottom.   

Size: I am finding out that girl clothes are cut a million different ways. (As opposed to boy clothes, that basically just ran small, true to size or large.) Jake could never wear anything that was small or true to size for his age. He was always a size up and two sizes up if it was Ralph Lauren. Hollon has some summer outfits that were a size 3-6M that I bought before she was born (I was expecting her to be a huge baby). She never wore them last year, but I hung on to them. As we move closer to summer, they will be too small, but right now, she can wear them. But most of the stuff I'm buying right now, I'm buying in a 12M. Some of it is a little large and some fits just perfectly. She can also wear some 18M stuff. It's the craziest thing. I'm still getting used to matching up the correct size for her depending on the clothing type (ie- dress, romper, shirt, pants, etc...) She wears a size 3 diaper.

Things that I love: I love that she reaches out for us now. I love when she crawls in my lap. I love when she smiles but doesn't show her teeth. I love that she has a giggle and a full on loud laugh. Did I mention I love her legs in a bubble? I love baby hands that just have dimples instead of knuckles. 

*So our sleep situation.... 

The problem: Hollon is not sleeping through the night. We get close here & there for a night, but she is just sooooooooooooooo inconsistent. She is inconsistent on what time she wakes up. Sometimes it is 11 at night, sometimes it is 2 in the morning, sometimes it is 4 in the morning. She is inconsistent on how many times she wakes up. Sometimes it is none, sometimes it is only once, sometimes it is every 3 hours. She is inconsistent on what she wants when she wakes up. Sometimes she wants to be fed, sometimes she wants to come get in our bed, sometimes she wants to play. 

What we've tried: We try to follow the same routine and schedule every evening. (Unfortunately baseball messes it up once or twice a week.) We've tried moving up her bedtime. We've tried giving her more food at dinner. We've tried letting her cry it out. (I couldn't do it for more than an hour. The more she cried the madder she got. It was horrible.) I've tried just soothing her, but not picking her up. (That made her extremely mad. It makes her madder for you to be in the room and not picking her up than just not going into the room.)

Results: See above about inconsistency. Some nights, the things work. Other nights, they don't. 

My thoughts: I'm torn about the whole thing. It honestly doesn't bother me that much having to get up with Hollon. I am not one of those people that needs 8 hours of sleep to function. I've never slept 8 hours a night, even before kids. But I do think Hollon needs her sleep. And I want to make sure she is getting a good night's sleep. The easiest solution (that works 95% of the time) is to give her a quick feed and then put her in bed with us. If I do that, she won't wake up again until Jake climbs in our bed around 6:00. Even though I know every professional (& my husband) would probably advise against that, secretly, I love the extra snuggle time with Hollon. In 15 years, she will probably be trying to sneak out of our house, shouldn't I enjoy the small window of time she is trying to sneak into our bed? But I don't want to create a bad habit that we are struggling with 5 years down the road and I'm kicking myself for not ripping the band-aide off sooner.

What we will try next: I got some advice to put them to bed at their normal bedtime. Then around 10:00, without turning on the lights, calmly get them out of bed, feed them and then put them right back in bed. It is the "dream feed" and that should hold them over until the morning. We tried it last night with high hopes. We put Hollon to sleep around 7:00 and at 10:30 I went in and fed her. I put her back in her crib and she went back to sleep just fine. But then the stinker woke up around 3:00. I let her cry it out for about 20 minutes and then went and got her. Last night she was in play mode, so we played in the dark on her floor for about 10 minutes, and then I laid her back in her crib and she went back to sleep. She slept until the morning. I'm pretty sure that is not how the dream feed is supposed to work, but I'm not giving up hope. We'll try it a few more times. I've also been advised by every person I know to use a sound machine. So we might try that as well.