I feel like Emmaline is a completely different baby – she met so many milestones this month + her personality continues to shine.
Likes:
- seeing her bottle
- sleeping in her own crib (YES!!! More on that below)
- playing with her cloth book
- seeing Daddy
- watching Rylie play
- looking at books
- watching us eat
Dislikes:
- being left alone on the living room floor
- being set in her car seat (sometimes she does well with this, and other times not so much)
Food:
Emmaline eats 8oz now and burps afterwards as loudly as a fully grown man.
We have started her on oatmeal, but she isn’t a huge fan of the texture. She’s had some banana baby food as well, but she hasn’t really taken to that either. But since I’m not nursing anymore and we are now paying for formula, we’re going to start pushing baby food / oatmeal along with her bottles a little more to offset her full bottles a couple times a day. Nothing crazy though, because “food before one is just for fun.” 😉
Sleep:
Emmaline is officially sleeping through the night!!! Can I get a “hallelujah” from anybody? And it wasn’t a one night tease either. She has been sleeping through the night every night for 2+ weeks.
She tends to let us know she is ready for bed around 7:30/8pm, which gives us some time to read alone with Rylie after Sister has been put down. We give her a full bottle (8oz) and make sure her diaper is clean before laying her down. Sometimes she goes to sleep right away, other times she fusses for a while before giving in to sleep.
Aaron and I stand by our decision to not start sleep training her until she was about this age. 3 month Emmaline would not have gone for it and she really did get more worked up the longer we let her cry – not conducive to the “cry it out” method we are now enforcing. But we do think at about 5 ½ months she got to a point where she was waking up in the middle of the night because she was in the same room as us and knew we would immediately tend to her. We also were hesitant to get her into her crib because we had intentions of Rylie and Emmaline sharing a room, so the cribs were right next to each other. Not ideal for a baby who isn’t guaranteed to sleep all night and a toddler who doesn’t have a rail on her bed and can get in and out whenever she wants. So we decided to move Emmaline’s crib out of Rylie’s room and put it in our office. It’s temporary, so we are not decorating it or moving anything that was there before it’s new tenant, but it has been perfect for now and we’ll see when (and if) we decide to combine the girls’ rooms again.
Life:
Truth be told, life with Emmaline has gotten so much better this month! She has been so happy – smiling and laughing often. Her moments of being upset are few and far between and there is usually a really good reason for her distress. She used to scream bloody murder and we would do absolutely everything we could think of and nothing could soothe her. It’s been so refreshing to see our girl so happy and thriving.
Rylie and Emmaline really are the best of friends. It’s adorable to watch Rylie care so deeply for her sister. Any time Emmaline fusses, Rylie instantly looks at us and says “bottle!” (because even at 1 years old, Rylie knows that food can fix a lot of things 😝 hahahahahha!) and she makes the funniest faces at us when we explain that Sister is crying because she’s tired or her diaper is dirty, etc. Rylie has even helped me change Emmaline’s diaper a couple times.
Unfortunately, Emmaline is clearly the second child – Rylie loves to wrestle Emmaline (who luckily thinks the whole scenario is hilarious) and say, “no ma’am!” when Rylie is ready to play with whatever it is that Emmaline currently has in her hand.
But Rylie is very good at getting Emmaline books to read and she loves hanging out with her little sister! Emmaline is the very first name Rylie says in the morning and she does not like being apart from her sister for very long.
Me:
Little love, you feel things so deeply, and although that can be tiresome right now, I know it is a valuable trait and I am so excited to watch your ability to feel deeply impact thousands.
I wrote a letter to Emmaline this month, and it was right before we got her into her own bed, she started getting full nights of rest and we met what seems like a completely different baby.
I had a friend ask me what was so hard about the first 6 months of Emmaline’s life, and to be truthful, I’m not ready to share it yet. Not because it was traumatic, but because I want time to be able to process it all. To be able to word it in a way that properly reflects the situation. It’ll come, and I will share it all one day.
But until then, know that although I love my daughter no matter what, this last month has been so much fun! I feel like she has come into her personality a little more, which is always a joy to witness. She is so happy, smiling and laughing, getting so excited she cannot contain it, curious and wanting to look at books, see what’s going on and have her voice heard. She really enjoys playing on her own, but after a while she very much prefers to be held and carried around so she doesn’t feel left out.
Guys, the full nights of sleep and her having her own room (or at least, not being in ours) has really changed a lot! I feel like a new person with all these full nights of uninterrupted sleep.
Previous Months:
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Curious what Rylie was like at 7 months old? Check out her monthly update 😉