Sigh. Poor, poor second baby. Sorry I stink at the updates. I partially blame my lack of laptop, but mostly it's just that when both kids are finally in bed I just want to watch cooking shows instead of sitting at a computer. It looks like soon I'm going to have better laptop access though, so fingers crossed for next month! (Luckily, I overgram like crazy on Instagram, so we have a full shelf of chatbooks with all of the best stories.)
Just a day or two after 6 months, little miss got her first tooth and started sitting up on her own really well. This pleased her greatly. A couple of weeks after that she got a second tooth and is now rocking the two bottom teeth look delightfully. She did great on our roadtrip to Lubbock despite the long drive and the car breaking down. After we got back, we moved her pack and play out of our room but didn't feel like she was quite ready to move in with CB (or that CB was ready for her) so we moved her into our big closet under the stairs (the "Harry Potter closet") and she mostly does okay there. More on that later.
Around 7 months she started to try to move, pushing back with her arms and usually moving away from whatever she wanted to get to. However, she was so much more involved and interested in things than she had been that there was a bit of contention with CB, who wasn't excited about sharing toys AND attention now that D had an opinion about which toys she wanted and could sometimes get to them. There were a few weeks that were just really hard because of CB constantly yelling at Miss D and taking things away from her and THROWING them so she couldn't have them.
Then a couple of weeks ago I was putting CB to bed while holding D because Eric was out late at a job, and D was reading for CB and just smiling and suddenly CB looked at her with utter delight and said, "You DO like me D!" It's been much better since then, with CB mostly celebrating D's milestones and enjoying her along with me. She loves trying to make D smile and always pulls her pacifier out if it's in when she starts making faces at her.
Just a couple of days before she turned 8 months, D got the hang of crawling forwards. It's so much different than CB, who army crawled for a long time before she got up on her hands and knees. D was always on her knees and sometimes even on her feet. She's always trying to get up and has already pulled herself up to a couple of things. However, just like CB, she can't resist crawling over to knock over a block tower,
Her favorite thing to play is "Where's D?" We put a blanket over her head and she pulls it off and laughs like crazy. She's a total mommy's girl right now, but she loves to smile at people from my lap. She loves anything she can feed to herself and has finally found some purees that she likes too, but she'll cruise across the room for those vegetable flavored baby cheetos.
With sleep, she's the exact opposite of her big sister. CB was an amazing night sleeper from the beginning and was a terrible napper. She gave up naps early and by 4 months was down to two that I had to let her cry herself to sleep for. D is a great napper and only recently gave up her third nap, but she's not great at night. I think part of this might be the fact that I learned how to nurse lying down last time, so I'd always fall asleep nursing her and just not put her back in bed, so now she likes to cuddle. Also, because of the second kid thing and the rough start we got off to with c sections and gallbladder, we didn't work that hard at putting her down drowsy but awake, and now we pretty much rock her (or at least hold her) to sleep before transferring her. Unlike CB, she transfers pretty well, so we haven't had much motivation to change things yet, but because CB was such an AWESOME night sleeper (10 hours straight pretty much every night from 3 months on) I have a little bit of anxiety about what to do to get her to be a bit more independent, especially at night. Part of me isn't that worried because we haven't reached a miserable stage yet - she usually goes back down pretty well during the times she wakes up at night (usually 1-2 times but again - sometimes I just fall back asleep and she sleeps better with me, so who knows?) and we don't spend hours putting her down unless she's WAY over tired. Having a set schedule has been so much harder this time, and I'm sure that's part of it. I also kind of enjoy snuggling her and know how quickly that snuggling can go away, so there's that too, but I still feel like SOMETHING will have to be done at some point, especially if we ever want to move her in with CB. Blah. Any advice on this would be appreciated. I'd rather not do cry it out this time unless it gets to be more dire, but all of the no tears ideas I've read have been kind of lame. So.
Lastly, D is still just a little ball of sunshine. She's SO easy going and cheerful most of the time that it's really easy to forgive her for things like making me occasionally frustrated at night still (what, they couldn't all be magical unicorn sleeping babies?) I need to baby proof a little more, which turns out to be harder when there's another little person leaving delightful tiny things all over (you know what D loves putting in her mouth? Pom poms. Which CB loves to leave all over the house) but I'm excited to watch her become more interactive and independent all the time. She's such a sweet, loving baby girl and I love her.
