It’s my birthday! Yeah! Why am I not in your arms right now? UP! I said UP!

We’ve had another exciting month with Peanut.  I guess every month is exciting when you’re a baby, huh?

The biggest news… I can hardly hold it in, I’m so excited… is that Peanut has been consistently sleeping through the night.  (Oh, man, I hope I didn’t just jinx it.)  We had been waking Peanut up for a 1:00 a.m. dream feed for a couple of months, but once she hit twelve pounds her pediatrician decided she was ready to sleep through the night (and so were we).  We gradually reduced the amount she took in her dream feed until she got down to 50 ml, and then we eliminated the bottle altogether.  We expected a few shenanigans while she adjusted, but – knock wood – she got the message right away and has only woken up during the night once since.  It’s been about two weeks of pure bliss.  I’ve gone into her room a little bit before her 6:00 a.m. bottle and found her awake, just quietly sucking her thumb or examining her pajamas, leading me to believe that if she is waking up in the middle of the night, she’s self-soothing and falling back to sleep on her own.  Seriously.  Miracle.

I’m well-rested! Are you, Mommy? Don’t get used to it.

Bedtime has been going surprisingly well, too.  Peanut is going through a phase where she can’t really sleep if hubby and I are there – we’re apparently too cool and exciting.  (First time anyone, anywhere, has ever thought that about us.)  If she is in our arms or can see one of us, about 80% of the time, she thinks it’s playtime.  So our routine lately has been the following: I feed her the final bottle of the evening around 7:00 p.m., then I rock her until she’s drowsy, put her in her crib, and putter around her room quietly putting away laundry or cleaning up her toys – just so she knows I’m around if she needs me.  If she fusses, I soothe her in the crib and help her find her thumb to suck.  If not, I kiss her goodnight, tell her to call me if she needs anything, and tiptoe out of the room.  Most nights, that’s the last I hear from her as she just quietly plays in her crib and drops off to sleep within twenty minutes or so – leaving me with a long stretch of free time to read in the evenings, which you can believe I’m enjoying.  I’m not singing or dancing on rooftops about this development, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Peanut, it’s that she is unpredictable at bedtime.  We’ve had other stretches of good bedtime routines that have lulled me into believing we conquered the crib, only to regress in spectacular fashion.  I’m just appreciating it while it lasts.

Why am I in this chair? Who are you? What is my name?

The other big news of the month is that we officially started solids!  Peanut has been eating sweet potato puree for about two weeks now and just moved on to Mom’s homemade applesauce.  I don’t want to say too much about it right now, since I have a big post planned for next week with lots of pictures and details.  For now, I’ll just tell you that it’s adorable and hilarious, and tease you with this picture (don’t worry, there are plenty more to come):

I can get messier.

It’s been a great month, but we’ve also had a challenge or two.  Daylight savings time messed Peanut up pretty good, which is to be expected, since it does a number on her parents as well.  Peanut had a few days of rejecting bottles, refusing naps, and shrieking at bedtime, all right around “spring forward.”  Add that to the fact that hubby and I both have trouble sleeping for a few days after a time shift, especially this one, and you have one exhausted family.  We’ve all adjusted by now.

We also had a couple of days of spotty weight gain this month, attributable to the time shift funk and to dropping the dream feed.  It always takes Peanut a few days to understand what’s going on when a feeding is dropped, and we went through the same thing when we eliminated her 3:00 a.m. feeding months ago.  We bump up her food during the day, but it takes her a little longer to get the message and start polishing off bigger bottles to make up for the feeding that was eliminated.  I always get jumpy when weight gain doesn’t happen as quickly as I think it should – even if I know that Peanut is not sick and there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for it – but for the past few days she’s been relatively good about finishing her bottles with a minimum of histrionics.  So I hope we’re over that particular hump.

I’m Irish, I have green pants, and I’m ready to party. Where’s my green formula?

Peanut at 7 Months:

Adjusted Age: 5 months.

Weight: 13 lbs, 4 oz

Clothing Size: 6 months, although she’s growing out of her wardrobe again.  She has an incredibly long torso, so her Carter’s clothes are still fitting well, since they seem to be cut for longer babies, but some of her other 6 month outfits are starting to pull in the shoulders.

Sleep: See above.  It’s great!  And now that I’ve said that, we’ll get slammed with a long spell of Gitmo-style sleep deprivation.

Likes: Auntie Em’s dog Ezra, who is thrilled that his love for Peanut is no longer unrequited.  She cranes her neck to get a look at him and giggles whenever she sees him.  Ezra is overjoyed.  He throws his toys up in the air, does little tricks, and generally busts his doggie butt trying to impress Peanut.  It’s hilarious.

Dislikes: Her boppy lounger.  She used to enjoy sitting in it to listen to stories, but no more.  It’s too reclined for her current attitude of must-see-the-world-and-be-involved-in-everything and she spends all her time trying to sit up.  (Her little baby abs are so toned with all those crunches.)  We have to sit her in our laps or lay her flat on her back for storytime now.  The in-between is no bueno.

Favorite Toys: We’ve been spending lots of time playing with her linking rings, at the suggestion of the occupational therapists in the NICU development clinic (she got the rings from Santa but we hadn’t used them much before).  She loves passing them from hand to hand and shaking them.  She’s also enjoying her O-ball, again because she can hold it with both hands, and a Fisher Price teething rattle that is shaped like an Elizabeth Taylor-style gigantic diamond ring.  I’m a little concerned about the precedent that sets.

My bling is bigger than Mommy’s.

Milestones: The biggest ones are sleeping through the night and eating solid foods!  We’re also working on sitting upright and creeping, and she’s made some progress toward both but she’s not quite there yet.  Next month, I’ll bet!

Quirks: We’ve started what I call the Stranger Danger phase, where Peanut freaks out at any adult who isn’t hubby, me, or Auntie Em.  And when I say freaks out, I mean freaks out.  We’ve had major meltdowns with “Silence of the Lambs” style screams both when her grandparents visited and tried to hold her (the horror!) and at the NICU development clinic when she sat on my lap facing away from me and could only see the (very friendly) occupational therapist.  I’m told that this is a good thing that she recognizes and prefers her caregivers over other adults, but man, is it ever loud.