4th of July

We had a great 4th of July holiday.  We were excited for Audrey's first trip to Cable Lake in Michigan, where many generations of Larson's have spent their summers.  Audrey loved the lake and played each day we were up there.  See how much fun she had?

  

  

Audrey is 8 Months Old!

Weight:  18 lbs 4oz (weighed at home with clothes on)

Length:  {unknown}

Clothes:  Mostly 12 months (9-12 mos) clothes, but some 6-9 mos clothes still fit

Diaper:  Size 3

As you can tell from the pictures, Audrey is pulling herself up and just moving all over the place.  It was an eventful month!

Food:  Audrey gets to try all sorts of new foods lately.  She still gets formula bottles, but she also gets a lot of fruits and vegetables and some dinners like chicken noodles and macaroni beef with vegetables.  Yummy! Overall, she is eating larger quantities of solids at a time.  We give her the "bigger" packs of food (stage 2) and sometimes at dinner she eats a whole jar of vegetables plus some fruit and cereal.  She's a growing girl!  About 3 weeks ago, we started giving her a sippy cup and solid foods like biscuits and puffs.  She really did not like them at first, especially the puffs and biscuits.  But since about a week ago, she can't get enough!  She picks up the puffs and biscuits and puts them in her mouth herself now.  She'll make a face and flare her nostrils still sometimes, but she'll eat them.

Sleep:  Audrey has been sleeping really well lately.  She hasn't made a peep at night for at least the past 2 weeks straight.   Around the beginning of this month, she started teething so she was up some during the night crying.  But once that tooth popped through, she has been sleeping really sound.  She's pretty inconsistent still with her napping...some days she will sleep 2-3 hours during the day, but other days she only sleeps 30-45 mins.

Here are several videos that tell the story of this past month - 

Chloe is 2

On June 2nd, Aunt Faye and Uncle Jim threw a party for Chloe McClue who turned 2 on June 10th.

Audrey got to celebrate with Chloe!  It sure was funny seeing them playing together.  Chloe was such a nice girl to share her gifts with Audrey.  

Look at me sitting in Chloe's chair!
Hurry, before she notices...

Audrey is 7 Months Old!

As usual, I took about a million pictures of Audrey in her 7 month outfit.  The problem... I can never decide which one(s) is(are) my favorite.  Here are my favorites from this month:

What a happy little girl.  Carl was making her laugh in the last several photos.  I love that smile.  She is so much fun!

Weight:  17 lbs 4 oz with clothes on (50th percentile)
Length:  27.5 inches (80th percentile)
Clothes:  She's wearing size 9 months (6-9 mos) and some 12 months (9-12 mos) clothes too
Diaper:  Size 3
Food:  I nursed Audrey for the last time on Tuesday morning, May 8th.  We had a stock of breastmilk in the freezer, so she still received at least 4 oz of breastmilk everyday up until the her 7 month birthday.  It was such a great experience for me to nurse Audrey, and I'm so glad I was able to do it for as long as I did.  Now, as of 7 months, Audrey gets bottles of formula along with cereal, fruits, and vegetables.  We're pretty much on the same schedule as she was at 6 months.  However, we have started giving Audrey a 7oz formula bottle at dinner time before her veggies and fruit+cereal.  Then, she does not get a bottle right before bedtime.  That's been working really well, and I think we are going to continue that.
Sleep:  Audrey has been sleeping really well through the night this past month.  She hasn't really even been up in the middle of the night at all, except for maybe a couple times.  She prefers sleeping on her stomach still.  Lately she'll get her feet up under her so that she sleeps with her butt in the air.  Audrey still isn't napping much during the day.  She may nap about an hour to an hour and a half total during the day, sometimes in hour increments but most of the time it's a half hour or 45 minutes at a time.

As you can see from this month's pictures, Audrey is sitting up all by herself!  

All month, Audrey has been working on crawling.  Around April 27th, she started getting up on her hands and knees and started showing a lot of interest in crawling.  Then a short time after that, she would get up on her hands and knees and then start rocking, then just within this past week, she started scooting.  Even though she wasn't officially crawling, she was getting places!  She has really been focusing on lifting her hand off the ground and reaching forward.  She would fall forward because she hadn't put together how to use her hands and legs together to crawl.  As of yesterday, May 18th, Audrey is crawling!  I dropped her off at daycare and had a feeling it was going to happen soon.  Sure enough, Carl and his parents were with Audrey before I got home from work and they confirmed that she had put it together and was officially crawling a couple "steps" at a time.  Today, she is getting further and further and faster. I think we're in big trouble now that she's mobile.  I'd better get to babyproofing this house!  Here are a couple videos -

Check out Audrey holding her bottle:

Audrey has learned how to blow food out of her mouth as she's eating.  It makes for a funny and very interesting dinnertime!  And then when she decides she's done eating, she'll just press her lips together or spit out the food.  We'll even get her to start laughing, but she'll smile with her lips closed.  She's so funny.  Here she is in her highchair:

Audrey still loves her daily baths.  We thought she splashed a lot before.  Holy cow.  She is quite the splasher!  After Carl gets done giving her a bath, he is soaked.  It's pretty funny.  Audrey thinks it's pretty funny, too.

Audrey is currently taking antibiotics to treat her first ear infection.  It's quite a process trying to give her the antibiotic, that's for sure!  She had a double ear infection with a bad diaper rash and a fever on top of that (we think from a viral infection).  Wow.  Quite a lot for a little girl.  But she hasn't really let it all bother her... she is still our happy little girl.  In the pictures of her holding her bottle, you can kinda tell she had a fever of around 100.5ish.

I know I say it every month... but I really can't believe that Audrey is 7 months old!  These past 7 months have been the best.  We love you, Audrey Bear!

My, How Our Little Girl Has Changed

Through her first 6 months...

From the day she was born, Carl and I are in awe at how beautiful and perfect our little Audrey is.  She gets more and more beautiful every day!

Audrey is 6 months old!

Our Audrey Elizabeth is already 6 months old!  I cannot even believe it.  In another 6 months, we are going to be celebrating Audrey's 1st birthday.  Wow, the time is really flying by!

Weight:  16 lbs 4 oz (50th percentile)
Length:  26.5 in (75th percentile)
Clothes:  Size 9 months (6-9 months).  She's really in between sizes right now, but just this week, I feel like she's outgrown most of her 3-6 months outfits and pajamas.  She is so long that she is outgrowing her clothes lengthwise!
Diaper:  Size 2
Food:  Audrey started eating vegetables (peas and green beans) this week!  Carl and I were looking forward to introducing her to the green vegetables because we thought she'd make some funny faces.  But her first taste of peas was uneventful.  She acted like it tasted just like her cereal.  Again, her easy-going nature carries over to eating, too.  She's such a happy and flexible baby!  Here is her current schedule, as of this week after her 6th month birthday (times are approximate):
6:00am - I nurse Audrey
9:00am - 5oz bottle at daycare
10:20am - Cereal at daycare (mixed with formula)
1:00pm - 5oz bottle at daycare
2:00pm - Vegetable pack at daycare (peas/greenbeans)
4:00pm - 5oz bottle at daycare
6:30pm - I nurse Audrey, then we feed her vegetables and 1tbsp of cereal mixed with formula (oatmeal, rice, or mixed grain)
8:00pm - I nurse Audrey just before bedtime, then we top her off with about 2 oz of formula
I am still pumping at work, so she usually gets about 6-8oz of breastmilk and 7-9oz of formula in her 3 bottles at daycare.  One of the teachers at daycare just suggested that we start mixing fruit with her cereal, instead of mixing it with formula.  They have been impressed with how well she is doing with her solid foods!  We'll start the fruit with the cereal at the end of this week.
Sleep:  As long as Audrey gets the extra 2oz of formula right before bed, she sleeps like a log until about 6am.  Most mornings, she wakes up between 4:30-5am wanting her pacifier, but she falls right back asleep.  In fact, I have to wake her up at 6am to feed her and get ready for daycare.  Over the past week and a half, she has been sleeping mostly on her side and stomach, as opposed to on her back.  We always put her to bed on her back, but she rolls over almost immediately.  Over the past few weeks, she hasn't napped hardly at all at daycare.  Some days, she'll have a couple decent naps, but other days she doesn't sleep at all.

Audrey is now getting her knees under her when she's on her stomach and starting to lift her belly up off the mat.  She is rolling all over the place and moving herself 360degrees using her upper body.  If we put toys in front of her or to the side, she will do everything in her power to reach out and get them.  She's really close to being mobile.  Watch out!  I think she would just jump up and start running if she could.

She is sitting up really well now.  I can sit her up between my legs on the ground and she will hold herself upright.  She's still a little unsteady and tips over to the side if she doesn't have anything supporting her, but she's getting stronger everyday.  She really likes to bend forward and hold her toes and even tries to put them in her mouth.  And if she's on her back, she reaches for her feet and holds them.  Happy baby yoga pose!

Audrey is now reaching for and grabbing everything!  She likes to play with rattles in the car.  She'll hold them and keep herself entertained for a considerable amount of time.  Just 2 weeks ago, we noticed a big change with her reaching for everything.  We were at dinner with Aunt Ashley, Grandma & Gramps Patton, Uncle Scott, and Grandpa Hahn.  Ashley was holding her on her lap before our food came.  Everytime Ashley would pick up her glass to take a drink, Audrey would reach for it like her life depended on it.  And now Audrey is so focused on and will reach for everything, all kinds of different objects.  She has even started reaching out for people.  Several times, if someone is holding Audrey and someone else walks up (me, Carl, Grandma/Grandpa Larson, Grandma/Gramps Patton, one of her aunts), Audrey will reach out to the other person for them to hold her. 

There have been a few times over the past month that I've had to go grocery shopping on Monday night.  So I go to Jewel right after I pick up Audrey from daycare.  Audrey is so happy and fun on our grocery-shopping trips.  And she's such a hit with all the ladies that work at Jewel!  At the fish counter, at the checkout... everyone wants to see our pretty little girl.  And she just smiles at everyone.  I'm a proud Momma!

Audrey has been laughing for all of this month, but it's more and more regular now.  Carl and are I pretty silly... we will do anything to hear that girl laugh.  It's the best sound in the whole entire world!  And over the past couple weeks, she has really started giggling and belly laughing.  Love it!  She laughs watching Chief and Bixby wrestle around, at Carl hopping or dancing, when going up and down the stairs, when we tickle her, when we make funny noises... She is the best baby!

Happy 6 months, Audrey Bear!  We love you!!!

Here are some pictures from this past month:

Audrey got to meet her Great-Grandmother Patton
at the end of March. 

Audrey just loved her!

Colby Marr and Audrey.  True love!

With Grandma Larson at the Dancing With the Teachers
competition.  Grandma Larson won 2nd place!

Look at those baby blue eyes!

I love this picture!  It's such a happy picture.  Audrey LOVES her Daddy!
She looks a lot like him, don't you think?

Grandpa Larson's birthday 4/14/12

Gramps Patton's birthday 4/17/12

Visiting Gramps & Grandma Patton