7 months!

Emilee is 7 months old today!!! When did my little baby get so big?! She is so cute. Right now she's bouncing away in her bouncy toy. She LOVES it. I think it is one of her favorite things to do besides play with mommy & daddy.  She'll bounce in there for a long time and she talks and plays with all of the toys on it. She'll look at me every few minutes and I'll clap for her and say "yayyy!" and she smiles SO big. Sometimes she does a little squealy laugh and it is ADORABLE. She is a happy baby. But when she gets mad, she can get MAD!!! haha!

(bouncing away!)

My little lady is growing up so fast. She can sit on her own (sometimes she falls over - she's still perfecting this skill). She "talks" a whole bunch. She's becoming more and more coordinated with her little hands. She likes to grab things - toys, people's faces, hair, pillows, blankets... anything!  She likes to watch TV (ohgoodness.) and she especially likes BASKETBALL. Just like Dada. :-/  I guess I can handle another sports-lover but ONLY because they'll be sooo cute together!

(Sitting up so well!)

Emilee loves to eat. She's not a picky eater so far. She has chunky little thighs and big ol' cheeks. I LOVE it! At her last doctor's appointment about 2 weeks ago, she weighed almost 18 lbs and she was 26 inches tall. She is in the 50th percentile for height (so as I understand it, half of the babies are taller and half of the babies are shorter than she is). And she is in the 75th percentile for weight. Cute little chubbers! I LOVE HER! :)  I've been trying to work on her baby book here and there so that I don't start to forget things. She's just growing up so fast!!!

Yum Yum, Dada!

She LOVES to smile and giggle. It's super easy to get her to smile. To make her laugh, the best way is to "eat" her ribs. She's so ticklish there. It's the cutest thing ever. After Emilee went to sleep the other night, I was showing Ryan a few videos I took of her laughing. After we watched a couple he said, "Let's go wake her up and make her laugh!!!"  I thought that was SO sweet! (We didn't wake her up, obviously!)

It's hard to get her to go to sleep, even when she's really tired. She just fights it, and she's also picky about her surroundings. We put a fan on for white noise. She also likes it dark in the room (just like her mommy & daddy). I also still swaddle her arms, but leave her legs free. If her arms are free she pulls out her pacifier and then cries. I put it back in, and she pulls it back out again. She also moves her arms too much and wakes herself up when I'm placing her in her crib if I don't swaddle up her arms. She's kind of old for that, but it works for her! I read another mommy's blog recently - she swaddled her baby 'til he was like 9 or 10 months old, I think. She said "I thought I was going to have to send him off to college with a large sheet and swaddling instructions!"  Haha! That's kind of how I feel.  Her sleeping patterns are still somewhat unpredictable. Sometimes she sleeps all the way through 'til morning, and other time she wakes up several times. Around 6 in the morning, I usually take her into our bed and she'll fall back asleep. I love waking up with her cute self next to me in the morning. It's especially fun on the weekend when Ryan is home, too. She'll wake him up and grab his face or kick his back if he's turned the other way.

She is such a good girl. Last Friday Lynae, Jessica, Emilee & I went out to dinner at California Pasta Productions (YUM!). I tried to pick somewhere that Emilee wouldn't be an annoyance if she got fussy. You can sit outside at that place and the weather was really nice, so that is what we did! Emilee was a perfect angel! No fussing. Just playing, smiles, laughter, cuteness. She kept laughing at Jessica with this really funny squealy laugh. It was SO funny. 

I think I'm going to take her to Target and Old Navy today. A friend found some cute jellies for her baby at Old Navy for like, $4, and I think Emilee needs some! And she needs some formula, too. I've been combining coupons to sometimes get up to $10 off which is HUGE! The doctor is having me try Soy for a little bit to see if it helps her gassiness. Poor baby has always had lots of farties and tummy aches. :(

We have TONS of clothes in her current size (6 - 9 months), so I've been dressing her in a different cute outfit every day. It's also been really warm here so she can wear all of her cute summer-y stuff. I love having a girl so I can dress her in cuteness!

 

 

Last night Ryan and I chatted in bed before we went to sleep. We were talking about what we'd name our next baby if it's a girl. (By the way, NO, I'm not pregnant and I don't want to be anytime soon!!! It's just a fun thing to talk about!!!)   We have a boy name that we both like, but we only had one girl name that we like (Emilee) and that's taken! I like Evelyn and Kaitlyn/Katelyn, but Ryan doesn't like those. He likes the name Erika which I don't like. He likes the name Kayla which I was like, "hmmm, that's actually pretty cute. I can work with that."  But then we realized that's WAY to close to CALEB! haha. That would get confusing. Ryan joked that we should name our girls Kayla and Janes and... we couldn't think of something that sounded close enough to Josiah... Lolilah? ;-) Delilah? haha!

For now, we're happy just enjoying our sweet Emilee-Bear. She brings us so much JOY. I love being her Mommy.

20 random things...

1. I really want a new mattress. Ours = sucks.

2. I have an annoying tendency to start projects and not finish them for a long time.

3. A new John Mayer song came on the radio the other day... it was the first time I heard it and I immediately started to CRY! In the past, I'd always already know about a new Johnny song because Carrisa would "alert" me. :) And when we were in high school, we'd often be together the first time we heard a new Johnny song. I felt like a dork for crying over a JM song... but it's amazing how sound/music can pull you back to a different time. I miss her.

4. Emilee brings me so much stinkin' JOY! I can't even express how much I love her.

5. My husband, Ryan, is pretty AMAZING. <3 Next March we will have been a couple for TEN YEARS!!!

6. I can't wait to have tea-parties and play dollies with Emilee when she gets a little bit older. :)

7. I have a weird thing about kids and their TEETH. Basically, there's this creepy age-range... I'm not sure exactly what age it is but it's when kids get their big-kid teeth but they still have tiny little-kid heads and it CREEPS ME OUT! HAHA! James just lost his first 2 teeth. I hope I'm not too scared of him during the next few years. ;-)

 8. I think I might've experienced the best feeling in the world the other day: Snuggling my Emilee-bear in our bed while she slept so peacefully, and her Dada was snoozing next to us. I've never felt so happy in my life.

9. The 3 cutest boys in the whole entire world are MYYY nephews!!! They're all mine - stay back! :)

10. I love how much my parents and mother-in-law love me and Ryan and our baby. :) We have a great family.

11. If you have a secret, don't even tell me you have a secret. The rule is, if you tell me you have a secret then you HAVE to tell it to me!!!!! I will bug you 'til you do. So don't even tell me you have a secret and you'll be better off. :)

12. When I was pregnant with Emilee, I thought she was going to come out as a red-head. There aren't red-heads in our immediate families, but both of us have cousins with red hair. I told Ryan we could call her our little "Ginger Snap". (I also like to call babies food-related nicknames, like when James was a baby he was "my little chicken nugget").

13. When I was pregnant I couldn't get enough French Onion Dip. I ate so much one time that I figured I'd never, ever, ever eat it again. Then 2 days later I had some more.

14. I wish our friends who don't live nearby would MOVE BACK. I'm talking to you, Lefebvre's, Tatro's, and Goodlin's (and you too, Creasy! Oh wait... I guess Heaven might be a little bit better than Butte County). ;-)

15. I don't really watch MTV but I LOVE "Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory" (and "Rob and Big"). HILARIOUUUSSS!!!

16. The best zoo I've been to is the San Diego Zoo. I want to go back really bad. I still have to feed the giraffes with Caleb someday. I've fed them with James and Joey at the Sacramento Zoo. SO FUN!

17. The cookie dough from Papa Murphy's is really good... in dough form or in cookie form.

18. I love this: http://pinterest.com/pin/154529830934122485/

19. I had never heard of The Hunger Games until the movie came out. We saw it last weekend and I like it! I might read the books or at LEAST see the movie sequels. :)

20. I made a "too soon" joke about Lincoln's assassination. You might've had to be there but... it was pretty funny. ;-)