7 months

I'm a little late in posting this, but I can't even begin to describe how much fun 7 month old Ella is. She has hit an all-time smiley, laughing, giggly girl high lately. She's playful, an adjective that I wouldn't have used to describe her even 1 month ago. She's always been precious and adorable and precocious, but now I'm adding playful to the list. Things are actually hilarious to her these days--from a silly face, to Daddy's whiskers on her belly, to Kaiser just sitting there in fear that she'll pull on his ears--the world is full of fun for her. I am having the most fun watching her discover!

Her newest discovery is the ability to blow raspberries ON someone. She's now made those beautiful farting noises on my shoulder, neck, leg, arm, and I'm sure we're nowhere near done yet. She just laaaaughes at herself and thinks she's so amazing and of course, she waits for us to laugh with her.

I continue to pray that her sleeping improves--I think it is slowly doing so. She's still waking up every night, at least once, often twice. I've stopped nursing her until it's been at least 8 hours, so it's up to Hal to calm her down until then. Most nights she cries for about an hour at 3 AM, and it's hard. I don't know why she wakes up at 3 on the dot night after night. I don't like it; who would? But I'm determined to help her learn to sleep better. Napping is the same way. She's napping on her own for 2 naps a day now, but she'll only sleep for about 25-35 minutes at a time. She cries out the second nap. It's awful. It's what she's doing as I type this.

No one could have prepared me for the lack of sleep and the sleep trouble that a baby with colic has, even months after the colic has subsided. It makes me sad for her that she has such anxiety with sleep, but I'm hopeful that she will outgrow it. As for now, we're accepting that truly good sleep is still a long way off, but we are soooo thankful for funny, silly Ella. She's a hoot!