My little girl is now 7 months old!  I love this age, but I also know that it only gets better and better.  Ally is a happy girl and loves her mama, dada, and brother Bode.  She’s finally starting to warm up to Boss our pug but still doesn’t like when he gets in her face and sniffs her eyes (yea I don’t know what it is but he loves smelling eyes).  The biggest thing about this past month was that it was my last month at home before returning to work.  That is why this post is sadly almost a week late.  I can’t believe how exhausting going back to work has already been.  But I’m sure it can only get better.  Both Matt and I have gone to bed at 930pm every day this week.  Bode is still at preschool while Ally is going to the same in home day-care Bode went to for the past 3 years.  I’ll talk more about their personal transitions next month, it hasn’t been the easiest but we’ll see how it goes after a few weeks.  Change is good and we will all take some time to adjust to me back at work.

Sleeping/Feeding

Overall Breastfeeding is still going well.  Unfortunately, I got mastitis again in the beginning of this month because I tried to drop my morning pump sesssion.  Apparently I was getting a little ahead of myself and should have just decreased that pump session because I got a clogged duct.  I caught it pretty early on because I noticed right away when my appetite decreased and I woke up in the middle of the night with a fever.  The redness didn’t come till day 2 but sure enough it was there.  I was able to get over it with antibiotics, lots of water, and lots of nursing.  I returned to work on December 9^th and will be doing some feeding and some pumping during the day in the hopes that not only will I make enough milk for Ally but also that I don’t get mastitis again.  This is her daily feeding schedule (at 7 months) – 6am nursing, 9am  bottle, 11am lunch (food), 3pm bottle, 430pm nursing, 530pm dinner (food), 630pm nursing and bedtime, 9pm dreamfeed (nursing).  I tried to drop the dreamfeed but since shes not eating as much during the day I think she needs it since she usually wakes up around 10pm if I don’t get up and dreamfeed.  I don’t know if I mentioned the word ‘dreamfeed’ before.  Basically a dreamfeed is getting the baby up (without waking them) and attempting to feed them so they don’t wake up and go right back to sleep.  Ally has always been really good with dreamfeeding, some babies just wake up or can’t eat when they are sleepy.  She is still only eating fruits and vegetables (besides breastmilk).  She likes everything that she has tried so far except for avocado but we’ll be trying that again someday soon.

Miscellaneous

She is not crawling yet but there’s a lot of rolling going on and if I leave her in one place she will roll all over but still prefers her back.  However, she does sleep on her tummy. She’s getting really good at sitting up on her own but still needs some pillows as props surrounding her so that she doesn’t fall down.

Update:  I forgot to mention we pierced her ears this month.  She wasn’t too bad with the actual piercing, it was when the nurse, doctor, and I had to hold her down that she got scared and cried.  But the end result is too cute and I’m so happy we did it!

This month we had a handful of ‘firsts’ including:

• First Thanksgiving
• First visit with Santa
• First Hanukkah

Diaper size – size 2

Clothing size – In between 3-6 months and 6-9 month clothes

Nicknames – Al, Ally, Ally-Boo, Ally-Bear

7-Month Hair color – brown

7-Month eye color –blue

7-Month Weight –  TBD

7-Month Height –  TBD

What’s up with Bode?

Bode has really shown a lot of excitement for the holidays this year.  That’s one of the best reasons for having kids right?  We introduced Elf on the Shelf and he understands that if he misbehaves the elf will report back to Santa.  This year Bode is asking for a ‘squirt gun’ from Santa.  What that really means is a ‘nerf’ type gun with darts to shoot.  So of course he decides this after I have already completed all of my shopping so we had to go out and make an extra purchase from Santa.  We are looking forward to Christmas morning and celebrating the holidays with our families.

Please enjoy the photos which include:  The Holidays at the Grove, Thanksgiving, Fall Family photos with Tiffany Nicole Photography, and some at home photos.