Amelia Jane - ten months old

In an effort to stay on top of it this time, I'm posting these pictures within 24 hours of taking them. Are you impressed?

A lot of photos and just a few words this time...

In the last few weeks, Amelia has chunked up. I just can't get enough of her round belly and face. A friend commented that she just looked less fragile. Exactly!

With her sudden growth came more movement too. She's pulling herself up more and more into a standing position and sometimes gets in a kneeling position if she's holding my hands or arms. She's very particular about when she will try, though. Hardly ever does she grab on to random objects. She will only even attempt to pull herself up if she's holding on to part of me. Even if I'm not actually helping her, she will only try with me (or maybe someone else who is willing to let her try). I keep trying to get her to grab on to her crib bars but she grabs on, lets go, and looks at me expectantly. It's pretty anti climactic.

No signs of crawling at all. Will she skip it?

She also scooted until she found me the other day. That is pretty big! Mostly, in the past, she's just cried and cried if she wanted me to come back to where she was. I was so excited to see her little head rounding the corner. Go, girl, go!

Just as most little siblings do, she adores her big sisters. More and more, she laughs with and at them, looks for them, wriggles around in my arms until she can see them, and plays games with them. Josie sometimes takes it too far and ends up making her cry by picking at her. It would drive anybody crazy. Audrey doesn't play games as much unless I start it and she joins in. Each of their relationships are different. I love watching them develop.

That's about all I've got for updates (since I just posted last week about her). I just can't get enough of her these days and it seems like I'm not the only one. The ladies at the gym childcare light up when she reaches for them and all of our extended family seems to just delight in her too. What a blessing she is.

The last couple of days, this is the only way she's happy half the time. She doesn't even want to be held all the time. That's a huge deal.

Sister shot: I had to beg Audrey to join us and then Josie was ridiculously silly. I got a few though.

Audrey: busted!

When I told them to move their heads closer, this is how Amelia responded.

Probably the best one

And the comparison shot: Amelia is kind of sort of maybe catching up in size! At least she doesn't look painfully scrawny this time. Josie's chubbiness was at it's peak here and it was pretty delicious. Audrey was just starting to chunk up, kind of like how Amelia is now. The giveaway that they aren't actually the same size is that Amelia is still in the smaller size onesie and it is still quite roomy. Funny how pictures can only show so much.

Amelia Jane - nine months old

Well. This post is a month late. I have a good excuse! Kind of. The background fabric for this month is a tablecloth that belongs to my mom. I didn't have the foresight to get it from her until after Amelia was nine months old, and she couldn't get it to me until she another week after that, so these pictures were taken quite late. And then I had to edit them, which was challenging, and I didn't have much motivation because Christmas, and then this post needed to be written. So basically, you will get two posts almost back to back. One of them will be shorter. Disclaimer done.

This month has been so great! Amelia is blossoming. Truly, she is hardly recognizable from the baby she was a few months ago. I attribute it to a few things. One, she's just getting older, more comfortable with this world and the life going on around her. Two, she's sitting up and scooting around a lot so she isn't as limited. Three, she's eating real foods and loving it. Four, she's learned that she doesn't need to be with Mom every single second of the day. Can you believe there are other things and people out there that aren't scary? She can, now. :)

Nursing is great. I don't keep track of exactly when I feed her, but I do believe we've dropped one feeding, maybe two, now that she's eating a lot of food. That's not saying much since she nursed so very much before, but I can see that we are on the decline with nursing and it is kind of fascinating to see how that works. I've never gotten to this point before. With the other two, I found myself losing production and desperately wanting to stop that. This time, it's natural because it's what happens as she transitions to food providing the calories and nutrients she needs. We still have a few more months of milk being her main source, but the end is in sight.

She eats great and doesn't seem picky about anything. I've experimented with giving her food in it's whole form and she is amazing at taking bites. For example, I give her a piece of buttered bread, broken into quarters, and she picks up each piece and takes bites instead of stuffing the whole thing in her mouth (ah hem, Audrey). I hover over her when I do this, waiting for her to try to do that, but so far she's been very sensible about it. It's entertaining to see other people's reactions to this because they always want to leap in and rescue her from danger but then are pleasantly surprised when she takes dainty little bites.

She also uses a straw like a champ (there was basically no "learning" this, she just knew how. amazing.) and has a sippy cup in the diaper bag and one at each meal that she can kind of man handle. Sometimes she is lazy and will try to drink without using her hands, ending with us all laughing hysterically as she fishes for it, kind of like bobbing for apples. The diaper bag also has her beloved puffs and animal crackers. Man, they really save the day. I don't even care that it's boring and not creative, having those as fall backs has worked fabulously.

Sleep has been okay. She's still great at going to bed awake and falling asleep happily. She just needs her pacifier, sound machine, and a blanket. No problem. I just wish she'd sleep through the night! She still wakes up to eat at 10:30, 1:30, 4 or 5:30, and then is up for the day way too early at 6:15. We are working on sleep training so hopefully next month I will have a better report.

One other thing to mention with her sleep is that she can go from napping in the car (a quick 5 minute nap or a longer one) to waking up, nursing or eating, and then back to bed with hardly any problems. Almost all of the other kids in my life have not been able to do this so car naps have always been terrible. I don't take this for granted; Amelia rocks at this!

Charming as always, now she adds a happy wave with her big grin and everyone is immediately smitten. Hide and seek is a favorite, and we've been singing "Open Shut Them" which always gets her grinning or at least distracted when needed.

I've been working on her jabbering, because suddenly she's becoming a lot more verbal. If I say "mamamama" she repeats back to me "papapapapa." She thinks she's hilarious when she does it, too. She also loves when we sing back and forth to each other. I match what she sings, then she changes it a little and we do it over and over. She jabbers in her crib when she's supposed to be sleeping and sometimes does it so loud I'm not sure if she's trying to yell at or for me or what. It's fun to hear her sweet voice, though. She was quiet for so long.

She still loves grabbing at my face or hubby's beard. I'm constantly pulling her fingers out of  my mouth or nose. Thankfully, she's gotten a little gentler now that she has a lot more hand control.

At her nine month appointment, we learned that she's 16 lb 9 oz. At just under ten months, that puts her at 16% which is a small jump up from her last measurement. I'm not surprised by this, since she's obviously been growing and is looking a bit more filled out, but I was pleased to see it and have the doctor affirm all of this. She's still just a peanut, but she's growing at a good rate and it's just the way she's meant to be, I guess. Genetics are crazy.

Our doctor spent a while watching her stand and move around. Millie spends a lot of her standing time on her heels, which is kind of opposite of most babies. It's more common that they'd stand on their tip toes. She also positions herself with her ankles turning out a lot, making her toes point to the sides more than forward. It's not a problem necessarily, but she does want to keep an eye on it. I personally think that she hasn't crawled or stood on her own yet because those two things make it a lot harder for her balance. She's getting better all the time, so more than likely it will correct itself, but like the doctor said, we'll keep watching it. Also, it should be noted that they checked her hips and knees and they seemed fine.

Here are the sisters all together! I think it's my favorite part of each photo shoot. The coloring was rough but the expressions and sweet little faces shine through. Oh, these three. They just get me every time.

Isn't this the greatest?? All three, hardly ever happens

Never a shortage on kisses around here.

And the comparison collage. Her legs and feet are just looking teeny tiny this month. Both Audrey and Josie had plumped up more when eating real food, but I guess since Amelia started from a smaller weight at six months, she has more catching up to do. I remember Josie being so wiggly during this little photo shoot, and Audrey laid perfectly and gave me this winning shot right away. Amelia was more random, sneaking in great smiles here and there. Each girl is so different. I love those differences as much as I love seeing how they are similar. Each characteristic they have is so fun to discover.

 I can't believe she's already this close to being a year old. Yikes! It's going so fast. Love this baby lady and her sweet, smiley, ever loving heart!

Amelia Jane - eight months old

It took three mini photo sessions to get these pictures taken. I haven't found a great place in the house that doesn't cast a lot of shadows, and then you throw in a fussy baby for half of the time, and it seemed impossible. Thankful to have them done!

Amelia turned eight months old on October 12th. It's been a pretty good month. She's definitely turned a corner with her general mood. When she's healthy, she's generally happy. This month, though, we had a bugger of a cold run through the house. She was down for the count for about five days and those were long days for this mama. She had a fever and slept a lot, but when she wasn't sleeping she was nursing. Obviously, she was not herself, and I felt awful for her. She was so fussy and miserable. Thankfully, that's passed.

 

Right before she was sick, she gave me a tiny preview of what a full night's sleep was like. She only woke up once around 5:30-6 two nights in a row! It was beautiful. Then she got sick, and that was the end of that. After she got healthy again, she resumed waking up 2-4 times a night. She still goes right back to sleep after eating so the whole shebang only takes about 10 minutes, but I am missing legit sleep like whoa. I'm definitely feeling foggy for parts of the day and sneak in naps sometimes in the afternoons while she sleeps. Thankfully, she's settled into a great routine of napping 2-3 times a day with them being at least an hour long. They never last more than two, but they are pretty consistent. She'll often wake up fussing, but I can reposition her quickly and quietly and she'll go back to sleep. I have to stay on my toes and get in there before she fully wakes up, otherwise it's over.

She's gotten stronger but hasn't crawled yet. I did see her up on all fours a couple of times recently but it hasn't resulted in much. She spends most of her floor time sitting, then laying, rolling, and scooting. She also does a slow spin, so she's fairly mobile. She doesn't like her exersaucer so I should really just put that away. The only "baby tool" we use is her high chair, and boy do we use it! I put her in there while I'm cooking, cleaning, doing school with the older girls, and she is happy for up to 20 minutes. As long as she has a snack and something to watch, she's happy. Of course, I also can't leave her sight. Me being out of sight for too long will get her quite worked up.

Her top two teeth keep on growing in, and they are adorable. She does this adorable grin where she curls up her nose and upper lip, as if to really show them off. (See below.) It's just my favorite face she makes. It's always really fast so if you blink you might miss it. I can't believe I was able to capture it!

Food is a great filler for her. She likes almost everything but often times only wants 4-5 bites of one thing before being ready to move on to something else. I'm not always ready for this and she gets impatient with me. If she's truly hungry, she focuses and eats fairly quickly, but I try to nurse her before feeding her so she's getting the max amount of calories.She's still such a peanut, and I know that the breast milk is more calorie dense.

Amelia continues to be fascinated with her sisters. More and more, she peers over at them for long periods of time. I am able to set her down by them and walk away without her crying for me. They get smiles from her that I am unable to get. Whenever I get her and bring her into the room they are in, she is greeted with big smiles, hugs, kisses, and "Hi Millie!" She does her straight arm wave and grins from ear to ear. Their reunions are pretty great.

When daddy comes in the room, she's started lunging towards him (when I'm holding her). I give her to him if his hands are free, but she usually wants to come back to me fairly quickly. I'm glad she's happy to see him, though. It seems to always take at least six months for our babies to warm up to daddy. Once they do, they really do delight in him. Generally, I am able to have someone else hold her these days, at least for a few minutes, and she hardly ever cries when I drop her off at the gym child care. She still twirls her hands and turns her wrists when she's frustrated, hungry, or wanting me. Such a funny "tell" that she's had since she was born.

This month, we stayed at a hotel for a family wedding and went swimming in the pool. The water was cooler than normal, but she actually floated around in her little baby floatie for a solid ten minutes before wanting out. That's a record for the Deyle sisters! The older two never tolerated it, so I was pleased that we were all able to be in the water together without her screaming at me. After a while, she was done (we all were, it was cold) and we didn't try again, so I'm not sure if it was a fluke or if she just has more patience for it.

She's been doing well with napping in the stroller, too. She never did this before, but now that I can leave her in her carseat and push her back and forth with our stroller, she does great napping away from home. This is especially fascinating to me because she prefers her room over anywhere else for sleeping. It's hilarious how easy and fast it is to get her to sleep at home. She just lays on her side and zones out with her pacifier and blanket. I'm so thankful for this. I also wear her in the Beco baby carrier when we are doing activities with a lot of walking or playing. She never ever complains. It's so convenient and makes it easy to be right there with the big girls. She's still light enough that I never have any back aches and pains. I don't wear her on my back often, but when I do, she likes that too.

For clothing, she's still a solid 3-6 month (will she ever grow out of this size?) and I'm putting her in her 6-9 month clothes even with them being much too big. We need variety. Her cheeks seem to be a bit chubbier, and she's eating like a champ, but she doesn't hold onto much of it to get legit baby rolls. She's got an adorable pair of gray moccasins that are 3-6 month and they are gigantic on her. At least I know they'll fit all winter!

I think her eyes are getting even more blue, and the comments are never ending. It's especially entertaining when people notice that all three girls have bright blue eyes. I hear often, "Oh, look at this baby's beautiful blue eyes! And her sister, too! Oh, and the other one, well they all have such gorgeous eyes! How did that happen??" I'm the odd man out, I guess, with my hazel eyes. :)

She loves when we clap and when we clap her hands together. She loves waving (I have noticed her waving at people that are walking by even though they don't see her, at vehicles, at animals, and even at inanimate objects). She loves to stand and observe what's going on around her. She recently stood against the storm door glass (with me spotting her) and thought she was the best babe in the world.

I have a ridiculous amount of pictures of her this month, right?

Here's the comparison shot of all three girls. It's more obvious how different they are in weight here. And the hair is blatantly different. I forgot how red Audrey's skin used to be, and look at Josie's chubby legs! Amelia's smile continues to be the biggest, even though she's only partially smiling here.

I also got a bunch of great shots of all three girls. They've hit a sweet spot for group photos. I can often get them all looking and smiling, although I have to take a lot to get one without blurriness or weird expressions. 

I just love these three so much! Look at them, just full of life.

What a great little lady our Amelia Jane is becoming. We love you Millie Moo, Mimi, Milbil, Milbie, Mia girl!