Laughing with Sarah

Five months...and twenty-four days...(June 20, 2017) Six months...and twenty-one days...(July 18, 2017) For those of you keeping tally at home, here we are at the halfway-to-Ellie's-first-birthday mark, which blows my mind. I cannot believe how quickly this last half-year has gone, Eleanor! You continue to shine as our our giggly, squirmy, happy, bouncy Ellie-belly. Big brother Sam can't get enough of you these days. He wants to shove his face as close to yours as possible, and grab your arms, and help feed you. He wants to hold you in his lap. He will pile your toys on top of you when he thinks you want to play. He calls you "Ellie-belly" like I do, and likes talking to you in the same sort of high-pitched voice that grown-ups use when they are talking to kids. I'm a little late in writing up this two-month update, so the timeline is a little out-of-whack, but this past weekend, at six months and three days or so, we decided to transition you out of...

Catching up quickly. Nearly two weeks ago, at 6 weeks and 6 days, I went up to Rochester for my confirmation ultrasound. Everything looked great! A baby, measuring spot-on, in an appropriate place in my uterus, with a heartbeat of 130. Doesn't look like much yet: That was my very last Mayo appointment for this pregnancy. I am now officially released to my local doctors. Crazy. Still on my estrogen/progesterone supplements through 12 weeks, but otherwise we get to transition to "normal pregnancy" status. I had my initial appointment with the OB nurse coordinator last week, which was basically my "orientation to pregnancy" meeting, exactly like last time. Then labs (uck). And now, waiting until my first appointment with Dr. Locke next week. Right now, according to dates, it looks like my due date is December 30 (totally inconvenient), made yet more inconvenient by the fact that it will be a schedule c-section....likely on December 24 or 26. Oops. A Christma...

Ten months - September 26, 2014 Well, little Sammy, I'm writing this post with a lukewarm cup of coffee by my side, trying to keep my eyes open after a second night in a row of bad sleeping on your part. It's a good thing that you are darn cute... Cute and kind and funny and sweet, that is. :) You are now ten months old (plus a few days), and you are a little man on the move. You're so busy that you're still hugging that skinny 10th percentile curve for weight. And it doesn't seem matter how many bites you take of scrambled eggs, quiche, muffins, grapes, chicken, shrimp, rice, Cheerios, pasta, bagels, donuts, bread, yogurt, squash, or anything else. You love playing and you love eating. Eating will get easier and easier as you get more teeth. You have two big ones on the bottom, plus a third one that is poking its way through. Someday you'll have top teeth, and then you'll figure out that chewing is the best. You've been a good sport about teeth...

Nine months - August 24, 2014 And just like that, another month has flown by. These days, it's hard to keep up with Sam as he crawls around all over the place. We are in full hands-and-knees territory. He can crawl, and sit, and change directions, and crawl while holding a toy, and bat a toy around and chase it. He laughs and grunts when he's moving at top speed toward something he wants (like when he races over from across the room when mama comes to pick him up from daycare). He shrieks - LOUDLY! - as he chases the cats around. He can pull himself to standing, though he's not quite so good at sitting back down once he's up. This is one mobile kid! Which means that we now have three baby gates and a bunch of corner protectors guarding the house. And it means that he has a few bumps and bruises from random pieces of furniture that he has decided to try to crawl through instead of going around. All this movement means that he's still burning calories like...

Eight months - July 22, 2014 Well goodness. What a big boy we have on our hands these days! For starters, we have two teeth! Both on the bottom, both of them about halfway grown at this point. Teething has been blissfully uneventful, for the most part. He drools more, sticks his tongue out a lot, and has a slightly harder time staying asleep at night, but otherwise he's not too cranky about the teeth-growing process. Just a little confused about what these weird things are in his mouth. Teeth! We've added broccoli, nectarine, apricot, and multigrain cereal to his list of foods, plus a few more sneaks of ice cream, whipped cream, and most recently, rømmegrøt (at this last weekend's Nordic Fest ). Sam has also decided that drinking out of a grown-up cup is the most hilarious thing ever. He'll watch Matt and me at dinner, and his face will light up when we take a drink...and then he'll reach out, wanting to take a sip of his own. We hold the cup up to ...

Well, we're a couple months into eating real food a this point, and it's fair to say that Sam LOVES eating. Sam eats an ecclectic mix of foods throughout the day. I nurse him in the mornings, at lunchtime, at bedtime, and overnight. He drinks formula during his daycare mornings. He eats solid foods at dinnertime (and sometimes at lunchtime) - sometimes it's food that I've made, sometimes it's food that we've purchased. I am totally okay with this crazy mix. For the first six months, we nursed exclusively. But at this point, I am okay with Sam experiencing a variety of foods and tastes, and as long as he is eating well (and getting good nutrition), I am happy with whatever combination of things that he eats. I've had a lot of fun making my own baby food. It's easy peasy to steam sweet potatoes and carrots and pears and peas. I keep our freezer stocked with frozen cubes of baby food. Big cubes of veggies. Ice cube sized cubes of fruit. Right now, I...

Well, we have entered the world of solid food! Over the last few weeks, we've started adding in solid food at dinnertime. Sam loves hanging out in his high chair and loves eating. When he's particularly hungry, he fixates on the spoon and whines for more food before he's even swallowed the bite that's in his mouth. So far, we've tried a handful of different foods. In order... 1. Rice cereal: The first night of rice cereal, he was NOT a fan. Combination of the newness of eating off a spoon and the new taste of something other than breastmilk or formula. Night two, he started to enjoy the process of eating, if not the cereal. By by night three, he was totally happy and chowed down a whole bunch of cereal. 2. Oatmeal: Oatmeal was a hit from night one. A tastier alternative to rice cereal. 3. Avocado: The first time we tried avocado, we tried it all by itself, just mashed with a bit of water. He hated it. The next couple tries, we mixed it with oatmeal, whic...