The Hargett's: Stella: 7mo Old

(more pictures at the end)

My Stella Baylee turned 7mo old on March 24th. I can hardly believe that 7mo ago my beautiful daughter came into this world. She has been such a blessing and is growing up so fast. In the last month Stella has been doing a few more new things: she started eating solid foods after her 6mo appt. Her first food she tried was squash and peaches…she absolutely loved them! My daughter is definitely not a picky eater; she sure loves her veggies…thank goodness. Stella has also had green beans, sweet peas, sweet potatoes, carrots, applesauce, pears and bananas. I’ve also had her try a little of the dinners we’ve had: baked potato and spaghetti sauce. She didn’t mind them either. Stella will even try to feed herself. I give her a little help when she does that so she doesn’t gag herself with the spoon. I also introduced “puffs” to her. They are little puff treats in different flavors that dissolve quickly and teaches babies how to chew. First I had her try the banana flavor, she gave a sour face the first couple times but she has really taken to them. Just the other day I had her try peach-mango and she loved them. It’s so crazy to see my baby start to chew and get ready for those types of food. Stella has also had apple juice and has learned how to suck out of a sippy cup. We are still trying to teach her how to hold on to her bottle and sippy cup. She’d rather just play or stare at her hands. Stella’s favorite thing to do while having a bottle is to mesmerize at her hand. Mom calls it the “Miss America wave”. She’ll just stare at it and slowly move her hand back and forth through her whole feeding. It’s hilarious to watch! Stella is wearing size 6mo clothes from Carters and is almost grown out of her 3-6mo clothes and is wearing 6-9mo clothes-some of the 6-9mo clothes are a tad big. Stella has also grown out of her 1-2 Huggies diapers! She is now wearing size 3…man o’ man. The sizes 3, however, are a little big. I guess my baby girl is just in between sizes in everything! Stella has now learned how to roll from her tummy to her back…I was so excited when she first did it. She is still learning how to roll from her back to her tummy, she is very close though. When she’s on her back she loves to pull her legs up and she just rolls to her side and will then get distracted by the TV or her toys. We’ve been practicing though! We still do a lot of tummy time everyday to give her practice in getting ready to crawl. Stella knows how to straighten her arms all the way out and lift her upper body up and she’ll look around. She is still teething but no teeth yet. My baby girl is a big drooler, some days are worse with the drooling than others. Stella is doing so much better with spitting up…she hardly does it anymore. We had switched from the Wal-Mart brand of Enfamil Lipil to the Gerber Good Start and she didn’t spit up at all. However, we just can’t afford to spend a lot in formula so after Stella turned 6 ½ months, we thought we’d go back to Wal-Mart brand of Enfamil Lipil and see how she did with it…and she’s done great! As long as we don’t press on her tummy or bounce her around a whole lot after she eats, she won’t spit up! Stella is now eating 6 oz of formula every 4 hours and is eating stage one veggies and fruits. She eats half a jar of fruit mixed with 1 TBSP of rice cereal in the morning and half a jar of veggies with a little bit of rice cereal mixed in to thicken it in the evening. I think she’s about ready to eat a whole jar of stage one though. We’ll probably try that soon. My baby girl is such a good eater, its made life a bit easier in that aspect. Stella is a BIG talker, she loves to mimic everyone and babble. She loves to hang upside down in mine and Troy’s lap and if she has enough saliva in the back of her throat she’ll gurgle it. It’s so funny to hear! Stella is such a mommy and daddy’s girl. She loves playing with daddy when he watches her. She especially loves to play with his nose. She’s way into touching everyone’s face. She also likes to play “high five”, she’ll smack anything with a hard surface to hear the sound her hand makes when it hits it. She still loves to play with her toys and eat them, her favorite thing to do is play in her jumperoo. She also likes to watch Sesame Street and Mickey Mouse. We’ve introduced blocks to her and she loves to play with those and tries to put them in her bucket. Sometimes she just likes to play with the bucket and tries to pick it up and eat it; it’s pretty funny to watch. I’m excited for spring to come and when it finally gets warm outside so she can play in the grass. She is also going to be introduced to the swimming pool in a few weeks when we stay up in Park City. Stella absolutely loves her baths. She is still in her tub in the sink and she loves to play with the water. She even lets me spray it in her face a little and she’ll drink it. In the upcoming weeks I’m going to try giving her a bath in the “real” bathtub. I’m sure she’ll love to kick her legs around and splash the water. She doesn’t get to really do that with the tub in the sink. Stella has stopped sleeping through the night unfortunately. She got a nasty cold a month ago and was sick for over two weeks with a bad runny/stuffy nose and mucus cough. So she was waking up 3-4 times a night. We are weaning her back to sleeping through the night. So far she’s slept through the night twice and the other times she’s waking up 1-2, sometimes 3 times. So we’re getting there. Some upcoming things I’m looking forward to are: her learning how to crawl, introducing more solid foods, pulling herself up into a standing position without mommy or daddy’s help and learning how to feed herself. I love this little girl so much and Troy and I are so blessed to call her our daughter. She is our everything and we couldn’t imagine life without her in it.