Month Nine Photos

Want even more pictures? Of course you do! I started a photo gallery for month nine. Look on the right side of the page or click here.

Shelby at Eight Months

Here's a video of Shelby at eight months, playing and being cute.

Thankful

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving and birthday week! Scott and I both had the entire week off of work and got to spend so much time with our sweet girl. It was great to be home all day with her and just relax.

We ate Thanksgiving dinner at Scott's dad's house and Shelby napped through her entire first Thanksgiving dinner! Then, on Saturday, I got treated to a special day of birthday pampering. In the morning I got a haircut and we spent the afternoon out and about while I was treated to a professional house cleaning! As a busy new mom, there is nothing better! I also got to play around with my other present - a new digital SLR camera! Click here for a photo gallery of some practice pictures.

It was a lot of fun to get back into photography and I am looking forward to shooting my favorite subject - Shelby - although shooting Sadie the whippet in action was pretty fun, too. Shelby might be the "world's most photographed baby" (as Scott's dad likes to say) but Sadie is a pretty photogenic subject as well!

(Click on the pictures to enlarge.)

Eight Months Old

This Thanksgiving, we give thanks for eight things at eight months. We are thankful for Shelby's ....

1. Laugh. She loves to laugh and it's so cute.
2. Sunny disposition. She is such a happy baby and smiles at everyone she sees.
3. Bathtime. No matter what happens during the day or how sleepy she is, bathtime always makes her happy.
4. Health. Besides a few sniffles here and there, she has been healthy.
5. Milestones. She is SO close to crawling. She spins, pushes up, scoots backwards and is very close to figuring it out.
6. Smiles. She can go from not smiling to giant grin in two seconds and it's really cute.
7. Voice. She is finding her voice more and more each day and will repeat some of the sounds you make, especially da da (although I don't think she knows what da da means yet).
8. Sleep. Despite a little unpredictability, Shelby is mostly a good sleeper. Knock on wood.

But mostly we're thankful that she's ours. We love our sweet baby girl!

Shelby at the Park

Shelby Eats a Mum Mum

Shelby is still figuring out the mechanics of getting a cereal puff out of her hand and into her mouth, and I recently discovered Mum Mums are great for self feeding. They're sort of like a giant cereal puff that doesn't get stuck to her hand or lost in her palm. The cereal puffs are great because they dissolve quickly, but they also turn to mush in her hand if they don't make it in her mouth on the first try. And as cute as it is to watch her try to eat her hand, she seems a little frustrated because her "pincer grasp" isn't fully developed yet!

I thought she would not be able to handle the Mum Mum yet, but they are easy to hold, dissolve quickly and she figured out right away how to chew them. She really enjoys being able to feed herself and it's getting more and more difficult to get her to sit still and agree to be fed purees! I don't think she's ready for chunks of food yet... Maybe I should get some of those mesh spoon feeders? When did you know your baby was read for self feeding?

Pumpkin Two Ways

Tonight, while Scott watched football and coached Shelby in the art of rolling over, I baked some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. I had some leftover pumpkin when I was done, so I looked online for a recipe that would not only use up the rest, but could also be made with ingredients I had on hand. I found a pumpkin muffin recipe and made what turned out to basically be a muffin version of the cookie. Both were delicious so I thought I would share. Happy fall baking!

Pumpkin Cookies

2 cups flour

1 cup oats

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup softened butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Combine flour, oats, baking soda, cinnamon, salt. Cream butter and gradually add sugars beating until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla, mix well. Alternate additions of dry ingredients and pumpkin, mixing well after each addition. Stir in chocolate chips. Bake 20-25 minutes or until cookies are firm and lightly browned. Remove from cookie sheet and let cool on racks.

Pumpkin Muffins

• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup canned pumpkin
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• (I added about 3/4 a cup of oatmeal I had from the cookie recipe and it gave these muffins a nice texture.)
• Preheat the oven to 400. Grease and flour muffin pan or use paper liners. Mix sugar, oil, eggs. Add pumpkin and water. In separate bowl mix together the baking flour, baking soda, baking powder, spices and salt. Add wet mixture and stir in chocolate chips. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full with batter. Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes.

Toys

Can you spot the favorite Guinness paperweight "toy" in the picture?

With Christmas coming up, I have been thinking about baby toys lately. Shelby really doesn't have that many toys and sometimes I think she might be getting bored with the ones she has. Her toys are mostly infant toys and they don't "do" very much, mostly because I abhor plasticky, battery-operated toys that make annoying electronic noises. That severely limits her toy choices because, well, almost ALL toys are plasticky, battery-operated toys that make annoying electronic noises! Most wooden toys are geared toward older babies and nearly everything I see in the 6-12 month age range is plastic, lights up and requires batteries.

Here are her current favorite (ie only) toys:

• The Guinness paperweight non-toy
• Sophie the Giraffe and Chan Pie Gnon squeaky toys
• Manhattan Toy Brian the Lion
• Manhattan Toy Whoozit and mirror
• Little Tikes tap-a-tune piano
• Various Sassy rattles, links and teethers
• Infantino elephant mirror
• Various board books
• Playskool busy tumble top
• Evenflo ExerSaucer
• Various stuffed animals
• Melissa & Doug alphabet nesting blocks

I don't want to overbuy toys and I don't want to buy toys that she won't play with or aren't stimulating to her. So readers (all ten of you) .... What are your baby's favorite toys? Leave a comment and take the poll on the right side of the page and share your feelings on baby toys.

The Pink Gnome

The pink gnome bundled up for an evening walk.

7 1/2 Month Update

Some random facts about Shelby at 7 1/2 months. I am afraid if I don't write these things down, I will forget them!

• She has been giving us some huge smiles lately and absolutely lights up whenever she sees the cat. If she is on the bed or in her high chair, she will look around on the floor for him and smiles and laughs if he is anywhere near her.
• She figured out how to push the button on her press-n-spin top and get the balls inside to bounce around. It might not seem like much, but learning cause and effect is a big milestone.
• She displays preferences for certain toys. She will dig around in her basket of toys until she finds the one she is looking for. Her current favorite toy is not a baby toy at all. It's a clear acrylic paperweight with a drop of Guinness beer encased inside that her grandparents brought us from the Guinness Brewery in Ireland. She loves to chew on it.
• She's getting better with tummy time and rolling, but still prefers sitting up. She will allllmost roll all the way over and just gets stuck on her shoulder until we give her a push. We call it the "99% unassisted roll." However, she will roll all the way over in her crib. Weird.
• She will hold a sippy cup and put the spout in her mouth but doesn't know how to tip it up and get water out. If I tip it up for her, she lets go of the handles.
• We gave her cereal puffs for the first time this week, just to see what she would do with them. She has not quite perfected her "pincer grasp" yet but she will pick them up and get them into her mouth with some effort. She picks them up with her index and middle fingers like chopsticks or - as Scott says - E.T.
• We introduced pears and apples and she hasn't been too crazy about them. Her favorite foods are still butternut squash and sweet potatoes. She also likes peas but I think the latest batch I made was too chunky and she didn't like them as much.
• She woke up a lot at night this weekend and I think it was because it was so dry in the house. My nose and throat was even feeling parched and I can only imagine she was bothered as well. We are running the humidifier and turning the heat down so it doesn't come on as much. She was probably feeling dried out and thirsty! It's natural to think you have to keep the house warm for a baby (since they can't snuggle under down comforters and such) but I read you only need to keep it around 68-70 degrees. I think we were keeping her room too hot, at around 75 degrees. We have a thermometer in there to check.
• The end of Daylight Savings time killed us. She was up extra early. I read online about some things you can do to help babies adjust and will try implementing them this week. You basically have to stretch their nap times and bed times a little later to their normal "clock time" bedtime so they adjust their wake time later. I hope this works and she's not going to be a permanent 5:30 a.m. riser because that's just brutal.
• Knock on wood, do a happy dance and cross your fingers, but she hasn't been sick in almost a month.
• Her two bottom teeth just don't want to pop through. We think we can see two tiny white dots right where they should be but they haven't sprouted yet.

I feel like the next few months are going to be big for milestones - teeth, crawling and pulling up just to name a few. Physically, it seems like she hasn't done much new lately, but you can tell there's lots going on mentally. Scott says you can see the hamster wheel turning when she's concentrating on something like eating a cereal puff or knocking over a stack of blocks. But crawling just in time to get to the Christmas tree... oh dear!

Shelby's First Halloween

If you guessed that Shelby would be a penguin and we would be her arctic explorers, congratulations you were right! Oh who am I kidding, who would ever guess that! Our costumes were a bit random for Halloween, but that penguin costume was just too adorable to pass up. I bought a white plastic table cloth and some snowflake Christmas decorations from the dollar store and decorated her stroller like an iceberg, and we spent a fun afternoon at our neighborhood block party. Holidays take on a whole new meaning when you have a little one. They're FUN!

Mama, I am not amused.

The penguin in her chariot. I mean "iceberg."

Ski clothes + furry trapper hats = arctic explorer. Obviously.

An unseasonably warm Halloween = our arctic costumes did not last long. We had to take Shelby out of her penguin suit for a while because it was so warm outside!

The party animal is pooped. Shelby fell asleep on the way home from the block party and was so tired during her dinner and bath. We thought she'd sleep hard and we'd have the evening free to greet trick or treaters. We were wrong. She had a lot of trouble falling asleep and eventually had a little meltdown, which is very unlike her. She usually eats, falls asleep and stays asleep without any crying or fussiness. I think she was having some teething pain. Or maybe she snuck some candy.

Boo! Happy Halloween! More pictures are in the new month eight gallery. Look on the top of the page or click here.