Greta at Eight Months

It has been awhile since I have done any substantial writing or updates on the blog.  I blame my day job that spills into my nights, poor sleep, and having two children.  My goal for over the break is to get caught up sharing pictures and stories from the last few months. I know of at least one summer adventure I have yet to write about as well.

Swinging at the park in Bayfield

Greta's sixth month stats have been misplaced.  I do know that length-wise she was above the 90th percentile, weight-wise in the 50th percentile, and head circumference was around 50th percentile as well. 

Eating rice cereal for the first time!  She's been doing great with all her foods that we've tried.  The only fail has been peas, but those weren't ground up enough.  When we tried real pureed peas she ate them no problem.  The two nights we've tried giving her carrots have resulted in terrible nights of sleep, so we aren't giving her those any more (even those two events are not at all related).

Some miscellaneous photos from six and seven months.  Again, I will share more as I put together posts wrapping up the year.

 Laughing and having fun with her big sister.

 We got the Exersaucer back from some other friends.  This has been in a handful of homes, really great sharing of baby stuff in our community, it is pretty financially and environmentally awesome.  Plus we can give it back as soon as she outgrows it, reducing the clutter in our house!  Greta loves it and is getting more and more adept in it.  She can now pivot really well, tracking conversations happening.

Happy sisters in the box! (story about the bandaid to come)

Greta is now eight months old.  Her current tricks are crawling at a ridiculous speed, pulling herself up on everything, clapping, babbling, playing peek-a-boo, and beginning to climb things.  Her overall demeanor is just happy - she is giggly, smiley, and loves watching chaos.  Rarely do I pick her up from daycare and get anything but "she had a great day."

Greta's biggest weakness is sleeping at night.  She's getting better at calming herself at times, waking up, crying and by the time I get to her room, she's back asleep.  It seems as though every time I go to get a snack is when she wakes up.  Most nights she still eats at between 10-11, and again around 3:30.  Often in there she wakes up again, needing to be rocked.  The worst is when she wakes up and is just that - awake.  Happy and awake at 1:30 in the morning is not very fun.

Greta has been sick for awhile, first with some colds.  After about two weeks of a cold we brought her to the doctor, she had an inner and outer ear infection.  She seemed to have about two healthy days after starting the antibiotics, then Friday night spiked a fever of 102, then was totally inconsolable on Saturday morning.  Her fever increased to 104, so we took her in to urgent care.  After a few hours and one impressive projectile vomit there, we were sent home with the diagnosis we expected, a viral infection, push fluids and alternate ibuprofen and Tylenol.  I put in for a sub with plans on keeping her home Monday and hung out with a fairly healthy and chipper baby.  Tuesday morning we were all set to bring her to day care and she woke up with a rash.  So, Nick stayed home on Tuesday (luckily he doesn't teach a class on Tuesday).   Tuesday night her back looked like this:

 One of my colleagues said it looks like she has some Medieval disease.  I would have to agree.  But, she was totally happy and fine.  We checked with the doctor, she was fine to go to day care looking like this since she hadn't had a fever since Saturday night.   Hopefully very few other parents saw her.

Crawling everywhere, need to transport your goods somehow!

Uh oh, she likes the hockey stick too . . . 

We are really enjoying watching her grow and figure out her world.  She is particularly fascinated by gravity and will drop something over and over again off her Exersaucer and track it fall to the ground.  Lilly still loves her but is starting to get more frustrated with her since she can get into her toys and in her way more easily now.  But no one can make Greta smile like her big sister and when Greta is crying, Lilly will sing to her and eight times out of ten it calms her down.