Weeks 30 & 31- Growth and Changes

The last couple of posts have mostly been about some of the bigger events lately, so I wanted to take a post to reflect on the smaller ways Karis continues to grow and amaze us (some of these have been over the last few weeks). God is so gracious for growing our little girl more and more everyday!

(sorry, this post is really long!)

Week 30

Princess Wave-
Karis is getting so dexterous! She has been able to pass toys from hand to hand for the last few weeks and has pretty good aim when it comes to grabbing what she wants. Last week when we came home we started to notice that she has taken an avid interest in her hands and fingers and will regularly hold her arm out, and stare at her hand as she flips it back and forth and slowly wiggles her fingers. We have lovingly called this her princess wave.

Full Push Up-
We have come a long way from the mini-push up days! Karis now can do a full push up with her arms, getting her chest and part of her belly off the floor. For a brief second I was even able to position her legs under her so she was on her hands and knees. She must be getting a lot of practice now that she can roll over and move about her crib!

Standing Tall-
While Karis seems to be progressing to crawling bit by bit, we both have a hunch that she might be the straight to walking type. She is getting strong in the legs from all her bouncing around in her doorway bouncer and can even balance herself (for less than a minute) when we prop her up to stand. She hasn't started pulling up yet though, thankfully! Might be time to start babyproofing!

Big Girl Bath-
Because she has been getting so strong at sitting up on her own, we retired her little infant bath. It is so strange seeing this bitty baby sitting up in the bath but she is loving it! She fishes her toys out of the water and likes to try to grab the water as we pour it. This is her Mugatu hair-do.

Self Feeding-
About a week or so before we left for Cali, we tried giving Karis some dissolving puffs to see what she though. It was a little early for finger foods, but she had been so good eating all the baby food and even handling the chunky stuff that we felt comfortable giving her something a little more solid. She took to them right away and it was a great help on the plane and in car rides since it kept her happy and munching (especially when she would see me eating and want a bite). So much more convenient than breaking out the bib, spoon and baby food! At the time we started with the puffs she had a success rate of getting the puff to her mouth of about one in fifteen and even those were probably just flukes. We would mostly just feed her ourselves but give her a puff or two to try to work with. The funniest part was that she would try a couple times to get it into her mouth and then end up giving up by sticking her arm to the side of the highchair and just letting it go without even looking at it, as if believing that it was a faulty puff rather than user error.

Well, by the end of 30 weeks she was really starting to self feed at a rate of 8/10 and had a genuine pincer grasp going! I can't believe all the progress in just 3 weeks! Now for meals after she is done with her babyfood I'll give her a couple puffs at a time for her to eat while we finish our meal. It is a great way to keep her entertained, happy and working on those fine motor skills!

Big Eater-
In other gastro news, Karis has really come a long way in her eating habits. For the first month or so we were only offering her well mashed pears, avocado, apple and sweet potato in addition to her rice cereal and only added one type of food at a time to watch for allergies. Now that she is doing well, we have been a lot more open to the types and textures we expose her to. She has tried carrot, squash, green bean (not a fan of any of these veggies, but she'll try at least a few bites each time. This is her reaction to the veggies:

My pediatrician says it take about 40 tastes of something to gain a palate for it so we keep offering her a few bites before giving her her favorites). We also have done some combo jarred baby food including apple banana, pear raspberry, apple cherry and mango which she enjoys. In terms of finger foods we have given her small pieces of bread, tortilla, rice, small bits of crackers and even piece of cheese and some yogurt (cheese and yogurt are an ok type of dairy since the milk proteins are processed differently. Babies aren't supposed to have straight up milk until one years old). She is become quite the eater taking in about 2 ounces (half a jar of baby food) about 4 times a day. On top of that I'm pretty sure she could eat puffs and bread until kingdom come. A snacker and a carb addict just like her mamma!

Potty Training- (this one is TMI in case you want to skip it!)
So Karis isn't really potty trained, but this girl never seems to be quite normal when it comes to bathroom issues. Since starting solids she has been regular every day which I was very thankful for. Since I knew to predict it, I started watching for some potty signs from her and the second I saw her starting to try to go I would swoop her up and put her on the potty. The first few times I was too late and had to wash out my cloth diapers, but over time I was able to catch her. Now I think Karis and I have worked out some elimination communication method and it seems like she will wait for me to take her to the potty before going. I just wait for the signs, take her over and she does her thing! I think I have only had to wash out a diaper three times since starting solids! I'm also hoping that this will help with future potty training efforts, but who knows. The only downside to this was that one time she was angled forward just too high and as I sat in front of her, holding her up she sprayed me...right in my mouth! I guess it's just practice for boys, but it was quite a disgusting and shocking experience.

Pruney-
In other bathroom news, even though Karis has been regular, she has had some tough times with some hard stools because of all the solids. Not wanting to put her on meds again, we started adding some prune juice in with her breakfast which has really helped a lot. We will do about 2 ounces pear or apple, a teaspoon of prune juice and rice cereal.

Tooths!
The week we left I noticed that Karis broke in her second official tooth! Incisor 24 has made its appearance!

Sign Language-
About the same time we started finger foods I also started teaching Karis some basic sign language to help her communicate with us. We currently do, "time to eat", "more" and "all done" and I am planning to add in "please" and "thank you" to get her started on manners early. She mostly just looks at us, but gets really excited with "time to eat" and "all done", I think it is because she thinks the gesture is fun.

Naptime Cuddles-
Karis' naptimes and bedtimes have been so smooth and makes me sooo thankful for all the effort we put into her sleep training. She will almost always go down without crying or maybe just a whimper or two and will stay asleep for either her 45 minute or 1.5 hour stretch without a sound. Then, generally she will wake up nice and happy just making noises and moving around her crib until I come get her. What a huge blessing!! However, the biggest perk is that she has come to anticipate her naps. After I put her in her sleep sack and take her to her room she immediately starts sucking her fingers. Then as I sing her naptime or bedtime song she will lean her head into me and snuggle until I put her down. It melts my heart every time!

Doing the Do-
Karis' hair has been growing out like a weed, so much so that I started trying to pull her bangs off her face. I love the side pigtail and she doesn't seem to mind it either. Yay for girly things!

Close Call!
Since Karis has been rolling and a lot more mobile, we have had to be more careful with where we put her. However, we didn't realize she was as agile as she has become and that she can now roll consecutively. Consequently we had a close call with Karis rolling around on the bed. It was scary, but a good reminder that we need to be constantly vigilant, but also still totally dependent on the Lord for preserving both Karis and us. What a great responsibility we have been given caring for not only her body but her soul. Henceforth Karis is always at ground level unless we are physically holding her down. This was also a very sobering blog. We will be bolting our furniture soon!

Reaching and Grabbing
Another skill Karis has picked up since she has gained spatial awareness is reaching in things to pull out items. She loves reaching in this little bin to empty all the contents. Unfortunately she doesn't know how to put them back yet!

Week 31

Frreeeedddooom!
At 7 months Karis has finally made it to crib freedom. She is no longer restrained by a towel wedge, pillow wedge and is no longer on an incline! It has been a long road with reflux and rolling. At first I was a little nervous to see how she would do without the wedges, but she handled it like a champ,falling asleep within minutes and staying down for every single nap. Now when we put her down she immediately rolls practically out of my arms and will roll a few times until falling asleep on her stomach.

Table Manners
This week was the first week ever that I had to do some real, genuine training with Karis and it took me by surprise! She normally eats great, but just started to show me her displeasure or her desire to play instead of eat by blowing raspberries while she is eating. At first I was just thinking she was just kind of exploring the texture by playing with the food in her mouth, but when she blew a huge raspberry into her carrots thereby spraying them across the kitchen table, I knew that whether or not it was just play, I needed to start training some table manners so she would know that bubbles at the table are not acceptable. The first day I was definitely not as consistent in stopping her bubble escapade, but with the help of a friend the next day I added in a firm "no" along with pressing a finger to her mouth so she would know what I was referring to. It worked wonders! By the end of the day she was only doing it once during meals (instead of the constant barrage I was fighting against earlier). If only future training would be so easy!

I know that there is the trend to let babies be babies, but I really do agree with the fact that you should start as you mean to go on, meaning if you don't want baby to be playing with her food in the future, you should help guide her now before patterns are established and you confuse her by changing the game on her part-way through. Here is our current list of table manners that we are trying to implement.
-No playing with the bib
-No playing with food
-No raspberries while eating
-No playing with the placemat
Thankfully, she responds well to "no" and the raspberries have really been the biggest issue (along with her biting down on me while nursing which was a whole other battle!)

Independent Play
Ironically I was looking back at week 10 and saw that I mentioned starting independent play way back when. Well, apparently that was short lived because we have not done some structured alone playing time with Karis as long as I can remember! She will sit happily and play while I'm near her doing chores or cooking, but I wanted to start establishing a set time during the day where she would play in her pack n' play and I could leave her totally alone. This is so that in the future when she starts crawling she would have a safe place to play on her own or when we visit friends I could put her in to play happily by herself and eventually when she gets older I could transition to room time. Plus I think it is helpful for her to develop skills to problem solve on her own and keep herself entertained. One of the reasons I was hesitant to start earlier was that I felt bad leaving her on her own when I knew she didn't have the skills to grab things or sit up which I would think would be incredibly frustrating. Now that she is more adept at sitting and grabbing I was more comfortable with the idea. The first day I plopped her down with some toys and left her for about 7 minutes playing by herself. However, once she realized I had gone there was a loud wail like I haven't heard in a long time! Aiyah! After trying that form of IP which resulted in crying, I decided I had to make it a less cold-turkey approach. Now I'll put her in after she is fed, changed, napped and happy and will stay nearby, ignoring her, but within sight. I'll leave the room and come in and out and she seems to be just fine for a good 20 minutes or so. Now it will just be a process of leaving her alone for longer and longer periods of time!

New Toys!
Karis over the last couple of weeks has really developed an affinity for any clothing notion. She loves buttons, patches and logos on shirts and snaps, but her favorite thing ever are cords. Even if Greg puts his hoodie strings inside his sweatshirt she finds the nubbins and pulls them out to suck on.

Twister
Also this week was Karis' first ever twister! Normally, we kind of ignore the first alarm unless it keeps going for awhile, but we decided early on that with Karis, we need to be more cautions. Well at 4:30am the siren went off! Greg plucked the poor sleeping baby out of her crib while I gathered our shoes and coats to bring into the pantry. Over the next 30 minutes the alarm kept going off, then on again, then off, then on again and it wasn't until 5:00am that it finally ended and I was able to put Karis back down for the night. She wasn't too amused by the disturbance, but she made it up by sleeping in until 8 the next day!


Socialite
Ever since our trip home I also noticed that Karis has become quite the little socialite. Although she has some stranger danger with adults, she LOVES other babies and especially small children. She will reach out to them and try to touch them and even started yelling after some poor kid in the supermarket. Hopefully this is a sign that she will make a good big sister!

Family Night
We also enjoyed a nice family night out this week and Karis got her first taste of the true Kentucky Chicken, Chick-fil-a! It was a great date night with dinner out, Jenni's ice cream and movie night. I am so thankful Karis is so happy and portable.

Until next time!