Ada: 7 Months

We're getting to this matter somewhat late, as Ada turned 7 months on the 16th. Still, I think it's worth a dedicated post. It's funny. When Ada was first born, I tried my best to savor those newborn moments. Inside my head, though, I couldn't help but look forward to summer.

She'd be bigger. She's be DOING things. Babbling. Crawling. The weather would be nice. Sun. Warmth. Stephen would be home. By the time June and July rolled around, life would be perfect. I feel like I always set up topics like that and then say something like: "But life isn't perfect these days because of x, y, and z."



What's cool this month? (Besides Ada meeting the young Bob Dylan? Oh, wait! That's Stephen with a haircut.) There really aren't any complaints. Life still isn't perfect, but it never is and never will be. But we've reached this groove, Ada and me. Stephen, too. We can go out and know how to handle things if they don't go swimmingly.

I think it's confidence mostly. It feels good.



We got a question about how Ada and the cats are getting along. I talked about it a bit in the FAQ Video, but Ada absolutely loves the cats. They, on the other hand, are scared of her. Or sometimes indifferent . . . but they are that way with us sometimes, too. We try our best to keep the relationship positive.

We have let Ada "pet" the cats and she's progressively getting more gentle about the whole thing. But if we notice they feel threatened, we split the three of them up to avoid creating a negative association pattern. So far, not catastrophes (see what I did there?).



Ada is able to sit on her own now, but not for long stretches of time. What has been the most remarkable in the past month has been her ever-advancing mobility. I feel like that sentence sounded so pretentious. I don't mean that Ada is advanced. I just can't believe how quickly babies go from slowly creeping along to speeding, climbing, and standing. Blows my mind.

As you can imagine, she's taken some spills. We are trying our best to prevent her from hurting herself. I find myself pining for a carpet-padded playroom more and more each day. For now, it's wood floors and lightning-fast reflexes. We may pick up one of those play mats, we're heard this one from Skip Hop is great.

I guess that's what gift cards are for.



Ada is mostly eating purees these days, but after trying her on some Cheerios, we re-tried some chunks of food. Now we give some her at the start of dinner each night and see how she does. We follow up with, like I said, purees.

At 7 months, Ada's food consumption is the following:

• 1/2 jar of fruit with 1 tablespoon oat cereal mixed in (for iron) 
• Snacks of a few Cheerios or Happy Baby Puffs (Greens) 
• Some steamed veggies or avocado, etc. in chunks, maybe 1 tablespoon 
• 1/2 jar of veggies

And if you missed the day-in-the-life post, you can check out Ada's typical schedule. We're still on about two naps a day of 1 to 2 hours each. 12 hours of sleep at night. I am trying to figure out if I should still wake her for a dream feed when we go to sleep at night.

Right now, she breastfeeds 6 times a day, so cutting it down to 5 seems like too low to me. But I don't really know what's right.

As I mentioned earlier, the biggest difference for me at 7 months is my level of confidence. I can go out and about without worrying anymore. If Ada starts getting fussy, I know relatively what I should do to help. Of course, my confidence is put to the test when she's sick, but overall -- I am getting there.

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