Abigail is 7 Months Old

We are on the downward side of your first year and I just cannot believe it.  How is it you are already eating baby food, sitting up on your own, and almost crawling?  What is even more puzzling is how did we ever live life without you? I find it so difficult to remember life before you.  This month has been big in terms of the new things you are doing. I am sure from here on out each month is going to be drastically different from the previous one.  We were out of town on your actual “birthday” so I did not take your 7-month picture on the actual day.  With Sumner and Anna Ruth, I took their pictures at various places. I am doing something different with you and taking each of your monthly pictures in the same place; your rocking chair.  We got back into town late on the 23^rd, so I had to take your picture on the 24th.  So technically, you are 7 months, 2 days 😊!

•  We started feeding you baby food when you turned 6 months old.  The first food you had was sweet potatoes.  You loved them.  My intention was to start feeding you at night, and then slowly add in the other meals.  Easier said than done…  It was a lot harder being consistent with you because of your two older siblings. Life is much more chaotic and busy than it was when they were your age.  When they were your age, we stayed home a lot more and even when it was the two of them, since they were so close in age, their schedules matched.  Not to mention you got a stomach bug that completely wiped out your appetite for nearly two weeks.  Now that you are just turning 7 months, I am consistently feeding you baby food at night, and just about every morning.  Lunch is hit or miss.  Right now, you seem to be picky about what you will eat.  You have had sweet potatoes, winter squash, prunes, apple sauce, bananas, and strawberry apple sauce. I have also bought the mixed baby food with spinach, kale, and apple or spinach, kale, and pear and you loved those as much as you loved sweet potatoes.  You make an awful face when I feed you apple sauce, and I think it is because you associate that with the Prilosec because we have always had to open the capsule and sprinkled it on a small amount of applesauce since you were 6 weeks old.  YaYa accidentally bought the strawberry/applesauce when we were at the lake and I fed it to you without realizing it and you liked it a lot. Now that I have gotten more consistent with feeding you baby food, you usually can wait about 4 hours between bottles instead of 3.  Up until about a week ago you were still only drinking 4 oz, but now you drink about 5, especially for your first and last bottle of the day.  You eat your baby food about 1 hour after you have a bottle.
• Your acid reflux has gotten so much better. In fact, we have not given you Prilosec in about a month.  
•  You have started waking up a little earlier; 6, 6:30, or 7 am.  You still go to sleep around 7 pm (as long as we are home).  You take 3 naps a day.  Your morning and afternoon naps each last about 2.5 hours and you take a shorter nap in the late afternoon.
•  You are sitting up on your own and love it.  You roll all over the place. Even the ladies in the nursery talk about how fast and much you roll.  You scoot around all over the place.  You can army crawl backwards and a little bit frontwards. You can spin yourself around in a complete circle.  Your chubby legs are very strong. You love to jump.  You also love when I am holding you in my lap to hold your fingers, so you can pull yourself to a standing position, and flop down, and then repeat. You also like to stand more than sit.  It is the craziest thing, but you really do stand up and just about hold your own weight for nearly a minute.
•   You love to watch Sumner and Anna Ruth play! 
• You do not like to be left alone. The minute we get out of your sight you start to cry.
• You are so curious/nosy.  It can almost be concerning how fast you whip your head around to see what is going on.
• You impress me with your hand/eye coordination.  You can pick up the smallest things effortlessly.  
• You have always had a fascination with tongues. Yes, tongues! When you were 2 weeks old you would study our faces so intently when we would stick our tongue out at you. I know it must have been a coincidence back then, but most of the time you would stick yours out when you saw us to it.  These days if we want to get your attention or if we want to make you laugh all we have to do is stick out our tongue. It works every time! :)
• You laugh and smile more than any baby I have even known. Everywhere we go people tell remark on what a happy baby you are.  You love to make eye contact with people and then laugh out loud at them.  You have the biggest laugh!  You have also really started quarreling and babbling! I love hearing you “talk!”
• You enjoy playing games like Peek-A-Boo, Creepy Mouse, and Ride-a-little-horsey, This little Piggy.  You also love playing with the little toys on all your seats, and other baby toys we got out of storage.
•  Your hair is getting longer and curlier. 
•   I know I have said it before, but it is still true today; your personality reminds me so much of Sumner as a baby.  Really the only difference between the two of you as babies is that he never slept (still doesn’t) and you do. Sumner never liked to be rocked and cuddled. He was way too busy for that! The only way he wanted to be held was to be sitting up, so he could see, or walking around so he could see everything.  He was always so observant, and you are the same way.  Every once and a while if I feed you when you are very sleepy you will let me rock you.  I usually take a picture to remember the rare event! 
• You weigh 18 pounds. You wear size 4 diapers. You wear size 6-9-month clothes. Some of the clothes you wear now were too tight on you two months ago, and now are loose.  You are still chunky, but now that you are more active, and now that you have grown some, you are slimming up. Sumner and AR were the exact same way as babies. 
• You still sleep in our room. We have not moved back to house yet. Once we do, you and Anna Ruth will share a room, so we can make the extra room into a playroom. That is the plan anyway…  You may be so use to being in our room, you won’t want to go anywhere else! Maybe not, though! You are in your own crib though!
•  Right now, you still sleep in a Zipadee Zip.  You love it so much.  We accidentally left it one weekend when we were at the lake, and you had a hard time sleeping.   
• You are still the best baby on the planet! Not only are you so easy going, but you are just so so so sweet!  You have a twinkle in your eye and it is just impossible to be around you for 15 seconds without smiling!  You rarely ever cry, and when you do it is easy to fix because it is either because 1) you are tired 2) you are hungry.  The few times I have ever been somewhere with you being fussy was when I forgot to bring you paci so you could not get settled.  I still carry your infant car seat/carrier everywhere we go because you sleep so well in it when we are out.  All I must do is give you a paci, turn on rain music on my phone, and rock you back and forth and in minutes you are fast asleep. 
•  Just to give an example of what a good baby you are… Because you rarely cry, Sumner and Anna Ruth get very upset and worried when you do.  They are not use to it, so they think something is terribly wrong when you do.  Last weekend we came home late from Moultrie visiting relatives.  You were getting hungry, and you cried from Omega to our house (10 minutes). It wasn’t even a very loud cry because Anna Ruth was asleep, and you did not even wake her.  Sumner on the other hand had never been to sleep (imagine that) and he was so worried about why you were crying.  I told him that most babies cry like that all the time; every single day.  I told him he surely did! I had to explain that you were the rare exception and hardly ever cry, and when you do cry on occasion, it doesn’t mean something is terribly wrong.  It really is funny because you are 6 months old and they have hardly ever heard you cry (for more than a minute).
•  Your brother and sister still adore you just as much (actually more) than the day we brought you home.  They still argue about who gets to hold you.  They even argue because the other one gets your attention instead of looking at them.  I have had to make them “take turns” playing with you so they will stop arguing. 

Dear Abigail,

You are so precious.  I feel like I am the luckiest mama in the world because of you, Sumner, and Anna Ruth.  You are such a blessing.  That is the best word I can use to describe you. Blessing! I hope, and I pray, you will never doubt just how special you are or just how loved you are.  God knew you before you were born and loves you even more than I do.  I pray with everything that I am that you will know Him, and you will choose to accept Him as the Savior of your precious life. I pray this world will be good to you, but when it isn’t that you find comfort in HIM and what HE is and what HE says about you. I pray you will find Godly friends. I have even started praying for your future spouse.  Being a mama is the hardest, but most IMPORTANT job I have ever done.  I am hard on myself sometimes, but at the end of the day I hope you always know everything I do… EVERYTHING I DO has you (and your siblings) best interest at heart. The greatest desire of my heart is that all three of you would walk closely with him from a very young age and continue to walk with him for your entire lives.  God is so good. God is so faithful. I pray you come to know it, too! I love you, Abigail, as high as the sky and the ocean is deep and more and more and more!!!!

Love,

Mama