the life of rileys: 8 Months

My baby is growing way to fast :( I am so sad about it, but it does just keep getting better. I just really try to soak it all in every day, because time flies and she changes so fast, I want to remember every little thing about her. She has such a happy personality. She is very interactive with people, smiling and 'talking.' She is just a little charmer. I could not love her more!

I've decided to stop posting about her schedule, since we all know it hasn't changed :) Same thing everyday, in three hour increments!

Feeding: We put solids on hold for awhile since Veda had an ELEVEN day bout of constipation. Seriously! She was still all smiles and happy, but we were very concerned to say the least. Thankfully, I've trained her well, and she had her explosion on daddy's watch ;)

So basically no solids for a couple of weeks, actually I just restarted them this week. She gets one ounce of food, around lunch time, on the days that I'm off work. Brett isn't ready for her to grow up yet, so he doesn't really have interest in giving her solids. When I work, she gets 3 or 4 five ounce bottles and then I breast feed her before & after work. I don't think I produce five ounces for every feeding she gets with me on days off, so therefore I give her some solids. I have not introduced rice cereal, I probably won't, thoughts?

Sleeping: She is finally back to sleeping through the night, hooray! We put her to bed, awake but slightly drowsy, every night at 8:30. She looks at her mobile for awhile, sometimes talks a little and then rolls onto her side and goes to sleep until anywhere between 4:30-5:30. Then she comes to our bed to eat and sleep until 8-9. She had one night this week that she woke up at 10:00, 2:30 and 4. She had a little tiny bottom tooth break through this week, so I think that may have had something to do with it.

She's a much better napper than she's been in the past. She takes three naps a day. Late morning is usually the best, up to 2 hours! The two afternoon naps are usually an hour but sometimes only 30 minutes. She is still napping in our bed most of the time because she won't just go to sleep in her crib. She'll want to be bounced/swayed to sleep and then its impossible to put her down. So what we'll do when she can crawl potentially fall out of bed, I do not know.

Always wakes up with a smile :) And crazy hair!

Stats: I went to our local hospital's breastfeeding support group this last week, which is basically a bunch of moms feeding and weighing their babies, but mostly chatting about our little ones and maybe a little talk about our spouses! Veda weighed in at 16 pounds, 10 ounces. She's growing strong :) Our next doctor appointment is in October for her 9 month check up.

Milestones: Veda now sits up completely independently, I still put the boppy behind her, just in case ;) When she does fall back on to her boppy, she tries to do a sit up to get back into sitting position but she's not even close to there yet! She can roll both ways but likes to pretend she can't roll from tummy to back, she'll whine until you come help her or pick her up. I know she can still do it because last night I heard some chaos in her room after I put her to bed, she was on her belly staring at the camera and then rolled back to go to sleep. Sneaky girl! She constantly hits her hands on everything, the table, her knee, daddy's face, etc. She's been babbling more and more, and for some reason prefers her lower register now and sounds like she's growling a lot ;) She has no signs of separation anxiety yet, and will gladly let anyone hold her. She can stand up holding on to a table, only for a couple of seconds independently, but for quite a while with minimal assistance. And, as I mentioned earlier, she has a tooth!

Love Hanging out with my Daddy!

Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

Likes/Dislikes: She likes to play peek-a-boo, listen to kids songs (like "If You're Happy and You Know it"), look in the mirror, splash in the bath, chew on anything and everything, watch football on TV (or anything with a lot of action).

She has the same dislikes: changing her diaper on an empty stomach and getting her boogies cleaned out of her nose!

Still love my walks!

And I look cool while I stroll, too!

Adventures: I think we had a busy month this month. We took a six hour road trip to Sacramento for daddy to work, with the Boeh family. We spent time in Old Town and also in Napa Valley. By the way, I was not that impressed with Napa, I actually prefer the Santa Ynez Valley and Paso Robles to Napa. To be fair, we only went to tasting in the downtown area of Napa, so I'll have to go back and do it right and go to Sonoma :) Darn!
Brett went to Atlanta to tape for BET's Comic View (YAY!), so Veda and I had some mommy and me bonding time. We went to visit my friend Alisa and play in her pool!
A travel nurse that I used to work with moved back home to Florida, so we went to dinner at Golden Road Brewery with some of my work friends.
We took Veda to Long Beach, to the Aquarium of the Pacific. It was fun but so, SO busy. I think next time we'll go on a week day, not in the summer! The very next day, daddy took her to the zoo with friends. She learned a lot about animals that weekend!
Our good friends who live in Nashville, were in California, so we got to celebrate their handsome little man's first birthday! That was so fun, we got to go swimming and then we stayed around a little longer to hang out with them and their family. It would be safe to say I'm ready for them to move back any day now.
This last week, Brett's aunt Glenda had an almost 24 hour layover at LAX (she lives in Tawian and was heading back to Kansas for a couple of months) so we went and picked her up so she could get rest and then meet Veda :) We'll get to see her again in October on her way back to Tawian.