Wow this month has been CRAZY! I can't BELIEVE how much has changed in the span of just one month! We've gone from being with each other every day, to me going back to work. This has been a big adjustment for me. All day long I worry about and miss my baby. It's hard on me, because Kayla is not doing great taking bottles at daycare. She is only taking between 5-9 ounces a day on average, which has me stressed out to the max! Also soooo much of my milk is getting wasted. It seems like 6-10 ounces of my milk goes down the drain every day, and this just KILLS me because it is SO much work to get that milk! I hate that it gets dumped. I really thought that once she went to daycare and started taking bottles everyday that I wouldn't have to worry about whether or not she's getting enough milk. Ha! Now I just worry about that I KNOW she isn't getting enough milk. I've tried everything from making the bottles for them, to giving them tips on how to give it to her... The one day I thought that I had the issue figured out, they sent home some of my frozen milk and we had to use to it that night. Well, Kayla was definitely hungry and was giving me her "hurry up and warm that bottle up" whine, so I gave it to her and she at first eagerly took it... but after a couple of sips gave me her yuck face and started screaming and refusing the bottle. I did an experiment that day and went to get her fresh milk to see if she'd take it... and she gobbled it up. That's when I realized that my milk has high lipase which was giving the milk a different taste to it and that she was rejecting the frozen milk. So I thought AH HA! This is the problem! But alas... I sent in fresh milk the next couple of days and she still had trouble. So this is going to be an ongoing issue with us it seems. Besides that issue, it does seem like daycare is a good thing for her. They give me her daily sheet that describes when she eats, goes to the bathroom, naps, and what activities she does for the day. She definitely does a wider variety of activities with them than she did with me at home. I also think that being around the other kids is good for her. I just wish we could get our bottle situation down!
Kayla has become a really good eater this month! She eats her baby cereal like she did last month (but she takes it sooooo much better now) plus she's had sweet potato, carrots, peas (yuck), apples (eh?), bananas (eh?), zucchini/pears/corn, chicken mixes, and butternut squash. I've realized that jars of just straight up meat baby food are gross. I like them mixed with veggies or other things... not just plain. Plain they look yucky! She's not a huge fan of fruits if they are on their own, but if they are mixed with a veggies she takes them pretty well. She'll eat a few bites of them on their own, but she prefers them mixed, but I'm continuing to offer them on their own because I've read sometimes it takes introducing something 10 times before they take to it. The only item that was a definite nope right off the bat was peas. She hilariously HATED them when I gave them to her.
She likes trying to grab her bowl and spoon if I let her.
Sleepy girl! Sometimes when she's getting done with eating, she'll space out and not pay attention to me. I tell her that she's in Kayla-la-la-land.
Well... she officially outgrew getting her baths in the sink this month. Now that she can sit up, she was too big to be in the sink. I'm actually thinking that it might be time to ditch this whole bath tub all together soon. She doesn't have a ton of room to splash around and play with her toys in it, but she definitely tries to.
So now, daddy is pretty much out of the bath routine. In the sink, we were both able to stand there and give her a bath. There's just not enough room for us in her bathroom by the tub, so it's a one person job... which is honestly tough. I was the soaper and Cody was the rinser before. It's hard to do it on my own without him.
Remember how I said that all of my milk was getting dumped down the drain? Well, I had the bright idea that I'd have the daycare dump it into a larger container so that I could give Kayla a milk bath. I had read that milk baths are really good for the baby's skin and have antioxidants in it and have all kinds of good properties... so I was like... sounds like a better use than just dumping it down the drain...
Ha! Add this to the list of thing that sound good, but actually aren't? Remember how I said that my milk develops a different smell after a few days? Well it wasn't the most pleasant smell, to be honest. So I have her sitting in this milk water, I soap her all up, and then she rubs her soapy hand in her eye. So she starts screaming that she has soap in her eye, and I can't see in the milk water to tell if I got the soap off of my hands to help her. So she's all soapy and rubbing at her eyes... getting more and more soap in her eyes and screaming. I'm screaming for Cody to help me, and we are just overall struggling in the smelly murky milk water. So Cody finally came in and gave me a wash cloth and I got the soap out of her eye. And I pulled her out of the tub and flipped it over to drain it... but then she was slippery and slipped in the tub.. and it was just an overall mess! No more milk baths for us...
My poor girl after we got out of the bath. :( You can kind of see her red eye in the picture from the soap and her rubbing it. Poor little thing. Yep, I guess that extra milk is just going to keep going down the drain. :( I've heard some people make milk soap bars out of their extra milk, but with the smell I'm not sure that would work out good either.
Once Kayla started daycare, she started getting into "crawling" position and she would rock back and forth like a rocking horse. She wanted to take off, but wasn't quite ready.... in the beginning at least.
Here is my little goof ball! I was on the computer doing something, and I turned around and she had flipped her mat on top of herself.
Look at my big girl! Sitting up all on her own in her stroller. No more bucket seat needed for her to be in the stroller.
The BIGGEST update this month by FAR though... is... we have a CRAWLER!! On 8/4, I was sitting on the opposite side of the couch as Kayla, and she kinda bear crawled and just baaarely crawled over to me. That was the first indication that she was going to be able to crawl! And then two days later on 8/6... she was officially crawling to get everywhere. I can't sit her down without her wandering off somewhere. This is a pretty typical view that I have of her.
And then I get something to grab her attention and she comes back to me.
Here is the video of Kayla's first crawl! This was on 8/5/20, before she really took off.
Here she is on 8/6/20 when she really got the "hang" of it, and was actually able to crawl around.
Now that she can crawl... she is getting into EVERYTHING! She keeps trying to eat wires. She was also pulling everything off of our coffee table so I had to move everything off of it.
Look at her already trying to pull herself up! Stop that baby girl!
Isn't she the sweetest. She'll be standing up by next month I'm sure.
She is sooo funny. All those books and toys she has right there...and what does she go for? An old box of hot sauce that we have propped up to keep our curtain from going over our vent. Gee!
Dex has secretly loved Kayla her entire life. Whenever she's upset or around... he was always around her...
Cosmo on the other hand, has basically had no interest in her whatsoever until this week when she's been able to crawl. Now he's fascinated by her!
At first I thought she was scaring/annoying him... but nope... I blocked her off from leaving the living room, and he sat on the other side of the barrier meowing for her.
Look at these two wackos! Playing cat and mouse with each other. Cosmo gets juuuust close enough to her to keep her interested, but juuuust far enough away to where she can't get him.
He sits there and watches her until she notices him and chases after him.
If she's not paying him attention, he'll walk by her.
She's like... I'll lay right down next to ya buddy.
She was playing with her toys, and he hopped up right above her and watched her. She couldn't get up to get him, but she was squealing and reaching for him... exactly the attention he wanted I think haha.
He was laying by the cat condo, and she tried to take a "shortcut" to get him, and she got caught up in his cat bed and couldn't crawl over it. She face planted and came up looking like Santa Claus because she had his hair all over her chin. Haha!
Look! Daddy has no hands! She was grabbing onto his hair and standing up on her own!
She is getting better and better at it. I was holding her up, and she grabbed onto my shirt and held herself up too. This is why I think she's going to be able to stand up before too long. Pretty soon she'll be cruising around. I really want to get our fireplace baby proofed.
A girl and her daddy and kitty!
Kayla likes to grab and "attack." She loves grabbing up my long hair, and she likes to grab onto any hair on Cody she can find. He needed a haircut a week ago, and she was loving grabbing up his "longer" hair. She also goes for his facial and chest hairs too. She also likes to pinch arm flab! She thinks it's hilarious when someone says ow and thinks it's a game.
She LOVES her peekaboo Minnie! She squeals with delight when it goes off. The first time you play it for her is especially adorable.
