Six Months.

Adelaide has reached 6 months. She started off 5 lbs 13 oz and has now reached a whopping 17 pounds! Life is slowly getting crazier as she is becoming more independent. In the past month, so much has happened. It seems that when babies start to learn things, it's like a domino effect. She's becoming such a person now, full blown personality with more of an understanding on how things work. Incredible hand eye coordination. Eating food. Teething like mad (her bottom middle left tooth should make it's debut soon!) Rolling around. Sitting up. Pulling herself up to stand. Talking her own language. She's doing all the things a 6 month old should do but she has the temper of a two year old! It's the Bays/Horton temper and boy is it fierce. She can reach this crazy high pitch when she screams that make you cringe. When she first learned to scream, she thought it was funny. We did not encourage it, ever! But she still laughed. It's awful. She just wants to be heard I guess, lol.

She is SO in to music. Music anything and she just stares and takes it all in. Sometimes she'll sing with me when I sing to her. Her favourite is when Julian plays the guitar for her. I reckon she'll be very musical. There are some incredibly talented people on Julian's side! They can sing and play instruments, so you can imagine Christmas time is especially fun! You may have heard of Jodi King or Jenn Mierau and of course, lets not forget Hot Live Guys. My side of the family are the dancers. Can't really carry a tune, but LOVE music and LOVE to show off their moves.
Here, listen to Julian play Beirut for Adelaide while you finish reading!

Adelaide is starting to become independent. She likes to put her own soother in her mouth. She likes to hold her own bottle when I give her water. She grabs the spoon and tries to feed herself at meals. She's getting pretty good at feeding herself a biscuit. We're a fan of Farley's Rusks. Sometimes she'll have one mixed with breastmilk and bananas for breakfast. But she likes just eating the biscuits. They dissolve easily and they must feel great on her sore gums.

Introducing her to food is so fun! So far, she hasn't snubbed anything. She's had rice, banana, apple, pear, prune, avocado, pumpkin, peas, and sweet potato. I've also introduced her to cinnamon. I get recipes and ideas from http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/. I find it weird that in our culture we introduce the most constipated foods first. It's hard on their wee digestive systems. Bug LOVES sweet potatoes, but they also constipate her really bad. Good thing she loves prunes! I am looking forward to the next couple weeks when we're gonna start adding new things to the menu and spice it up a bit! Just because we're Canadian, doesn't mean we gotta feed her that way!

With all the changes going on in her diet and her teething roller coaster ride, she's become more susceptible to diaper rashes. So she is experiencing her first one. It sucks. The moment I noticed it I knew it was yeast related. Most diaper rashes are. It's bright red and raised. It started off patchy. So right away I upped my intake of Acidophilus to 4 capsules a day from 2 and I break open a capsule and give Adelaide the powder inside with some food or water once in the morning and once in the evening. I was using Penaten Cream at first but surprisingly that didn't work. A friend of mine got me a jar of Sudocrem and that seems to be working and giving Bug some relief. We also spend the day naked which gives us plenty of opportunities to use the potty. And at night I put her cloth diaper on really loose so moisture doesn't get trapped. Hopefully it won't be around that much longer. For more info on how to get rid of a yeast rash click HERE.

Now that Adelaide is sitting up and rolling over and pulling herself to stand I have to start baby proofing because it won't be long before she's on the go and into everything she shouldn't be. This is when things start getting really fun! lol. This is when you lose that last bit of baby weight!

5 Months.

"You and Me". One of Bugs favourite songs. I have an Ipod Touch so a couple times a week when we're laying in bed in the morning, I'll play a some youtube videos for her. This song is a good one to play when she's a little cranky. She calms down almost instantly.
And, "I Love My Hair" makes Bug smile and giggle. It's a great song.

I love Sesame Street!
http://www.sesamestreet.org/
We don't have cable or anything and we don't really watch the TV unless we watch a boxset and that only happens when Bugs in bed at night. (Right now we're finishing up Battlestar Galactica, the newer series!) So she rarely gets exposed to TV except when we watch a couple videos here and there on the ITouch or when we get together with friends some Saturdays to watch Hockey Night in Canada. She LOVES hockey! I am not sure how I feel about TV, but it's obvious to me that if she was to be exposed to the Tube, then only watch very small doses. And of course be careful what you expose their wee minds to. For instance...when I first started showing Bug the video clips on YouTube, we watched a couple Baby Einstein videos I found...she was enthralled, but they were boring. So I searched for a variety of them. Here's one we watched:

It was at about 2:43 when I realized that this really wasn't for kids. And the title didn't say "not for kids" at that time. But from the beginning of the video I was a little weirded out. Oops, lol.
Anyway, five months is fun. She's "talking" more, her vocabulary is quite something! She has learned to scream and will just do it because she can. She thinks it's funny. I hope this ends soon, lol. She's so giggly and really fun to interact with! She's a really tiny person with likes and dislikes. She is SO close to sitting up on her own. And she just wants to stand and jump all the time. She can roll over to one side only with a disposable diaper on because the cloth diapers are a bit bulkier, ha ha ha. Two teeth are about to make their debut any day now! And as of 2 days ago, we introduced her to food. Rice cereal, apples and breast milk. She seems to love it.

We decided it was time because she was waking more frequently at night time for milk. Like 5 times a night! Now she wakes up for 2 or 3 quick top ups between 7pm and 8am. Much better. Now I am excited for her to get to eat what we eat. Since we have the Cadillac of all food processors we'll be making our own baby food! I am thinking about getting a table at a farmers market this summer so I can sell jars of it, along with all the baby attire I make! I'll keep you posted!


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Four Months.

This is rather unbelievable to me, but Adelaide is 4 months old today. The time is going scary fast. It's incredible watching a tiny human learn the simplest of things. When she does something new, I lose my shit over it. I get SO excited for her, and she often looks at me like I'm crazy, ha ha ha.

A few weeks ago I feel like we entered a stage of double time. Like, she is learning SO fast. Everyday I feel like she does something new. She's really becoming a person with likes and dislikes. Who interacts with the world around her. You can really see her learning right before your eyes. And just as you get used to your routine, wham, she switches it up because she's either growing, or teething, or over stimulated, or god knows what!! It's fun and sometimes not so fun, lol.

We had a few hard days last week as Bugs teething worsened. She woke up screaming in the night some nights. She was tired but in too much pain to sleep, she was hungry but it hurt to suck. I felt badly for her. I didn't want to introduce her to medicine like Tylenol. But then my sister recommended Camilia which my cousin Fiona had recommended to her. Seriously this stuff is MAGICAL!!! It works so fast. It's a homoeopathic non-numbing pain reliever and there's no alcohol, sugar, coloring, flavoring or preservatives! They also have other products for colds, flus, and colic. Anyway, it's great that we got this stuff when we did because her drooling has gotten crazier, her gums are redder and her cheeks are a bit bigger and often rosey, she grabs her hair by her ear when she's in pain, and just cries. So, we are for sure on the journey to getting teeth...(my poor nipples, lol.)

She has been a rather chatty Cathy lately. I love talking to her when she babbles. She'll laugh at herself. I mean, she's hilarious, and she knows it! She also seems to yell at me sometimes. I try not to laugh, ya know, maybe I took too long getting to her for whatever reason (maybe I was in the bath) and she'll have a right go at me, lol.

She is well on her way to sitting up! I put a pillow behind her and she plays with her toys or her toes...which is something she has just discovered. As she reaches for her toes, she often loses her balance and starts to fall to one side...don't worry, I'm always there to catch her.

And her toys! About 3 weeks ago she started showing interest in her toys, but now she really interacts with them. This all such great news because I can sit there with her and crochet and talk to her while we listen to music as she independently plays and chews on her toys while occasionally chatting back to me.

Breastfeeding is a cinch now! We usually lay down so I have 2 free hands so I can read while she feeds, but of course sometimes we just chat. I was wondering how much she ate, so I quickly figured that in a 24 hour period she eats about 10 to 12 times and I think she takes about 4 or 5 ounces per feed, which means my body is most likely producing about 40 to 60 ounces of milk a day! Eeep! This whole experience has just made me really feel and understand that I am an animal, a mammal, and it's just incredible.

It's just this whole new level of love that I never knew existed until she got here...I honestly CAN'T imagine my life without her. My pal Andrea said it well when she was talking about her wee one (Willa is almost 2 months old.) She said, "Feels like I've always known her, like she's always been here." And yes, that's exactly how I feel too.

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Life.

Isn't this a great photo taken by my husband?
We've been home (Toronto) from home (Winnipeg) for over 2 weeks now and it feels like forever ago. Maybe because so many things have happened in this time (some good friends had their baby, there was an adoption in the family, we had a battle with Wynn Family Properties because we had no heat - btw NEVER rent from this company) and Adelaide has grown significantly and has learned so much! As of January 5th, she was 10 pounds, so I am sure she's well in to her 11th going on 12th pound. It's incredible how fast she grows out of clothes. She'll wear it one day and then by the time I do laundry and she goes to wear it again...it's too small.

Since we've been home Adelaide has put herself on a schedule. I just followed her lead. I demand feed of course and let her sleep as much or as little as she wants. It's so amazing having a bit of routine and completely effortlessly on my part. She takes 3 or 4 naps a day and sleeps through the night!! Like she goes to bed at 9:30ish and sleeps until noon the next day, waking up 2 or 3 times very briefly for a top up! Since we have a family bed and I breastfeed, I just pull her closer to me so it's completely effortless.

During the day I play music all day and have the curtains open so it's bright and sunny and I go on with my day making noise as I need to and she sleeps through it all. Here's me folding laundry as she naps.
But at night time I close the door and turn off the lights. I've been consistent with this from the beginning so she could differentiate between night and day. I thought going out would be difficult with the schedule she likes, but she's just so flexible. When we go out she just carries on with her thing, sometimes feeds or socializes or sleeps, and then when it's time to go home, she falls asleep in her baby carrier and we just put her in to bed when we get home and she carries on sleeping until the morning. I cannot believe how delightful she is. I feel like somethings gonna change soon...right? Either way, I am so enjoying this. So content and rarely fussy.

I can't believe almost 10 weeks have past since she was born. I feel so much more confident now and things just come naturally. I am so loving being a Mum! My day is spent cleaning, playing, reading and baking bread. I accomplish this while she's napping and thanks to my cousin Fiona who lent us her Over the Shoulder Baby Holder sling, I can get things done AND hold baby at the same time.


Sometimes she sits in this bouncy chair that we got from my parents and she watches me bake as she cheers me on.


She's so strong now too! She loves standing and sitting. She has such great neck support and control.

She shows more interest in toys too, so I made a little play area which we hang out in several times a day.


It's just incredible HOW fast she's become this little person who's so full of emotions! When she cries there's real tears and when she smiles or squeals it's not followed by a fart or poop!

The smiles are so incredible though, one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen, (and I'm pretty well traveled so I've seen a lot of things, lol.)


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