Kayla 6 Months Old

At the start of this month baby girl started to eat baby cereals.  She took to it pretty well, but I still can't get her to eat more than one teaspoon at a time.

Here's my little sweetness the first time we tried solids.  I wanted to start solids at 5 months so that she had some practice with them before she went to daycare, and I went back to work.  They say you can start them any time from 4-6 months.  I was hoping that she'd want to eat more of it by now, but she still eats it like a little bird.  Hopefully next month I can get her to eat more and more.

My little cutie on her piano mat.  This is still her favorite item. 

Although now, she gets around a little bit.  She rolls and kind of scoots to wherever she wants to go.  I originally set her down on her mat, and look at her over by her toy bin.  She has been picking out books for us to read too and handing them to me.  We read between 10-20 books a day with each other, and she likes looking at her books.

Her favorite toy is her butterfly though!  She will have a whole slew of toy around her, and she'll go for the butterfly everytime.

She does like to chew and look at her Minnie Mouse sometimes though.

You can see that I normally setup toy all around her.  And she'll move in a little circle playing with all of them.  Sometimes she'll be playing with one, and I'll shake or show her another one and she'll move onto it.

She's also starting to chew on everything and put things in her mouth.

I found this little chew bracelet and she loves it.  I'm thinking that she is going to start teething soon, and I've been on the lookout for a tooth.

I was pretty surprised, but she really likes this rattle toy.  It has a little bell in it, and she's quite interested by it.  This came in her Lovevery box, which is a monthly box we get full of age appropriate toys for two months.  She has lots of loud/flashy toys, but she tends to gravitate towards playing with this one.

So focused on getting it.

This is another Lovevery toy that we got.  She is starting to get the hang of being able to spin this one.  It is a color wheel with a bell instead, so it makes a noise every time she spins it.  I get so proud of her when she figures out to spin it.  It's so adorable watching her start to comprehend things, and do things on her own.  It amazes me that she's able to figure it out.

Abby and Kayla at Aunt Sherry's house getting ready to go swimming for the first time.  Aren't those girls so adorable?

Here's Kayla getting into the pool.  She usually doesn't like baths so I was nervous as to how she'd do.

However, I need not have been worried...  She really didn't have much of a reaction to it at all.

She liked it when I spun her around in a circle going "Weeee... Woooo"

Here she is in her little floatie.

Trying to get her to splash in the water.

Here are both girls in the water.  Abby really enjoyed the water and took to splashing really well.

Abby girl in Aunt Sherry's living room.  Aunt Sherry had all sorts of baby toys for the girls to get into.

My sweet girl!

Oh my goodness... aren't these girls so sweet!

Kayla doing her super girl pose.

Look at this big girl pressing up on her own.

Kayla and Cody had their first father's day!  Happy father's day Cody!  Cody is such a great daddy.  Kayla just adores him.  She thinks he's so funny and she always smiles and laughs at him.  I won't lie... it makes me a little bit jealous!

Here is my dad with Kayla on father's day.

She was trying to grab his facial hair.  She is ALL about grabbing stuff this month.  She grabs our hair all the time.

Family picture.

Daddy and his girl.

Dad kept falling asleep on our couch, so Cody kept having Kayla "get him".

Aww cute picture!

Ride the pony.

Sleepy girl in her chair.

On June 24th, we took Abby and Kayla to their first ever zoo trip. 

They were more interested in looking at each other than they were the animals.  Haha!  I'm so glad that we got to go out with them at least once this summer.  The Coronavirus really threw a wrench into our summer plans.  I had planned to hang out with them and Shawn a lot more than we did.  But with everything going on, it just didn't feel safe to go too many places.

Becky and Abby looking at the bear.

Kayla and I.

Zoo trips wear our us out!  It was really hard to manage Kayla eating while we were out.  It's hard breast feeding.  It's very time consuming.  And I'm not a "sit around and relax" during the day type.  I like to "go go go" and see/do everything.  So having to take a 30-40 minute break every 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours is rough on me.  I also felt like a burden having to stop while I knew Becky wanted to look at things.  And of course bottle feeding with a cold bottle at the zoo was hard.  So feeding on the go is tough.

Our breastfeeding journey is going well.  I'm still concerned about Kayla's weight.  She's on track to gain about a pound this month... which is still a little on the low side.  But besides feeding while we are out and about, our breast feeding has gone pretty well this month.  I have noticed that she is distracted more and more, so sometimes it's a challenge to keep her focused on eating, but we've been working through it pretty well.  She is starting daycare soon though, so she won't be exclusively breastfed anymore.  We'll see how she does when she gets bottles throughout the day.  I feel very stressed that I'm not going to produce enough milk to keep up with her demand now that she'll be away from me during the day, but we'll see how that goes soon.  Luckily, I was able to stash away a few hundred ounces of milk so I'm a little bit ahead of her.

I absolutely love my baby cuddles and snuggles.  She's such a good snuggler.

Kayla and Maia are so sweet together!

Maia loves holding the baby!

Kayla was wanting to grab her hair.

Maia wanted to push her around like a baby doll.

All done mom!

Yummm

All gone!

Raquel came into town for her 30th birthday towards the end of June.  It was nice to get to see her and Brylee.  I hadn't seen Brylee since she was Kayla's age! 

Brylee adored Kayla and loved playing with her.  She was so cute and wanted to help and take care of her.

Aren't they sweet?

Brylee was the first "big kid" that was able to hold Kayla.

She played a little bit rougher than the other little kids did, but I'm glad they got to see each other.

Here we both are with our babies.  Raquel and I were always so close growing up.  I'm glad that she came up to visit with us.

Kayla is moving around more and more.  I looked down while I was pumping and THERE she was... Haha. This is her... "Hey that's my milk" look.  She's been moving around and getting people's toes this month haha.

Here she is in her "spy shack."  She peeks up and watches people while she's in her pack n play.

My girl loves this little shaking/rattle toy.

She was digging it, until daddy showed her the butterfly.

My pretty baby!

Super girl! 

Happy baby

I love this picture of her.

4th of July cutie.

More cuteness.

My girl loves to eat her hands!  She's constantly eating them.

Daddy and baby on the 4th of July.

Another one!

I love this picture of us!  It's actually my profile picture.

My sweet girl out on our deck.

Happy baby!

Smiley baby!

She was tuckered out at the end of the night.  I officially understand why people get upset when people light off fireworks on the 4th of July, because she fell asleep and the fireworks going off scared her and woke her up.

Grandma came over on July 5th to hang out.

Grandma cuddles!

Kayla is finally tall enough to go into her jumper!  She was so excited about it!

She likes to bounce around and her the music.  It's a new fun thing to do.

The bouncing has been real good for her too, because after she's been in it, I can tell a difference with her being able to sit up on her own.  So obviously it's helping to strengthen her core and legs.  She does get tired out in too!

Speaking of being able to sit up!!  Look at my big girl go!  This was something that we were working hard on, and she finally is able to do it!  Yay Kayla!  At first she was leaned over pretty far and pretty dependent on her arms holding her up, but towards the end of the month she was able to sit up without her hands holding her up.

She has also started to stick her tongue out all of the time.  She's also starting to drool a bit too, so I have to constantly wipe her mouth off.

Is there anything cuter than such a happy sweet baby?

Pretty girl!  I love it when she's so smiley and happy.  In the last week or so, Cody says "Meow" to her and she cracks up laughing.  She thinks it's so funny.  Also every night, when I put her sleeper on I sing her part of, "zip-dee-do-da" and she gets SO excited.

Every day we read books!  Lots and lots of books!  Like between 10-20 books a day!  Usually Kayla is very engaged in the reading process too.  She looks and touches every page.  In the mornings we would read "educational books" like ones about colors, letters, and counting.  Then in the afternoon and night time we read more of story books.

Our favorite book right now, is Little Quack.  She gets very interested and excited when we read little quack.  Cody's aunt got us this book, and she gave us a giant stuffed duck to go with it.  Our car was too full to bring it back with us from New York when we were last there, but since she loves it so much I asked Deb to bring it with her next time she comes up.

Selfie!

More selfies!  Sweet baby!

Daddy and baby close up.

Tongues out!

Flex!!

Kayla is sooooo close crawling!  I think that she'll be crawling any time now honestly.

This is her.... "I'm going to get you mommy" look.

Watch out Dex!  Baby girl is going to get you pretty soon!

On July 13th, Kayla went to daycare for the first time.  She seemed just fine there, and didn't have any issues.  But I was so sad.  I definitely cried.  We had such a nice 6 months together.  I was with her for almost every second of her whole life... from when I carried her in my tummy through her first 6 months of life.  I knew that I was able to take really good care of her, and keep her safe from sickness.  It's hard to lose that control, and not know what she's doing every part of the day is hard.

Daycare under ideal conditions is hard, but the coronavirus seems to be spiking up in our area, and that makes me even more nervous.  There are only 5 other kids in her daycare area... which honestly makes me feel a little guilty too, because no one else sending their kids back to day care.  But we just don't really have much of an option.  I just hope that she stays safe there.

Her first day went well, I got a little report back at the end of the day with what she did.  She took a nap for them, ate two bottles, and she played in an exersaucer, played with musical instruments, and read books.  They said that she also played well with the other kids.  I'm glad that she's able to get some socialization and hopefully make some little friends.  I think being around other kids is a big deal to her development.

One day at day care and she came home more ready to crawl than ever!  At daycare she's the youngest one there, so all the other babies can crawl/walk around.  So hopefully she'll pick that up from them even.  But look at her up on all 4s!  This isn't the best angle of it either, but she was up and holding it for quite a while.

This isn't the best example either... it's hard to snap a good picture while she's doing it.

Here is a little bit better of an example of it!  My girl is going to be crawling in no time!  Oh no!  It's really nice to be able to set her down on her mat and be able to walk away.  Looks like my days of doing that are limited. We are going to have to start baby proofing the house soon.

Look at her!  She was most definitely not placed under there!  I put her on her mat, and she scooted her way all the way over there.

Here are Kayla's half birthday photos!

We went to Miller Nature Preserve in Avon, and Hannah took pictures for us.  It was beautiful there.

My big girl able to sit up on her own!

Baby girl wasn't in the best mood here to take pictures, but we did the best we could.

Happy girl

Here she is with her "half cake" that says 1/2 birthday on it.  Hannah laughed at me and said that I'm extra.

I took some more pictures on "portrait" mode on my camera.  I can't believe how nice pictures come out on this setting.  It's honestly better than even my DSLR.

My lovie!

Half birthday girl!

Looking at her crown.  Look at all that hair this girl has!

My sweetness!

Daddy and baby.

Here we are with her birthday cake.

Mommy and baby!

Love my girl!

Here we are on the bridge looking at the fish below.

Family shot!

She loves daddy playing with her.  No one can get smiles out of her like he can.

Family shot!  This place was so beautiful!

Our month has been so full of new things with Kayla this month. It's always an adventure to see what she will be into and like in the new month.

Here is Kayla on her first father's day with grandpa riding the pony.

Here are Kayla and Brylee.  Brylee was singing to her to calm her down.

Here is my happy girl in her swing.  So sweet.

Kayla loves these drums.  If she sets them off herself, she gets so surprised and excited.

Kayla has started to just recently start to get into her book pile, and try to pick some out.  Watching her play with her books makes me so happy!  She hated books when she was a newborn, but I persisted and now they are a big part of our day.

Here she is playing and blowing raspberries at daddy.

I think this is my favorite video of the month!  I can't believe how smart Kayla was to know to try to grab the pacifier.  It just shows that she's learning how to do to things.  And I love Hannah's grandma's reaction in this video too!

Speaking of being smart enough to do things... I was sooo proud of her for figuring out how to spin this.  I spun it, and then used her hand to do it... and now she does it on her own.  My baby is getting so big and so smart!

My big girl is finally tall enough to go into her bouncer!  And she really likes it too.  The only thing is that she gets tired out pretty quick.  I can tell she gets sleepy in it.  I do think that it has really helped strengthen her muscle though.  After we put her in it, she was able to start sitting up better on her own.

Ok I lied before... THIS is my favorite video of the month!  I love when she's so happy and smiley!

Kayla 5 Months Old

Here we are getting to see Aunt Becky, Uncle Bobby, and Abby!  This is the only way to see your bestie during a quarantine.  They came over and hung out on the deck with us, and we stayed apart from each other, but still got to hang out a little bit.

Here's my little mean mugger. 

We got a swing that we've kept in our garage this month.  And we've spent LOTS of time hanging out in there.

 Kayla likes to play in her baby chair while we are outside.

She is starting to play and interact with her toys more and more. 

Here she is SO fascinated with Mickey mouse.   

She has really blossomed into liking me reading to her.  We read between 5-15 books a day.  Our favorite books are Kayla Rose can change the world, Little Quack, and Peter Rabbit.  Kayla really likes to look at the pages of those books. 

She is starting to try to eat all of her toys.  Here she is trying to eat her piano mat.

Kayla has been able to roll onto her tummy for a while, but now she's able to roll back onto her back now too.  This has been a game changer, because instead of her being stuck on her tummy and crying, she's able to roll back onto her back on her own now.

Kayla is FASCINATED with anything that Cody and I are eating or drinking.  She always shows a lot of interest in what we have.  So much so, that I can't eat anymore while she's nursing or she'll stop and look up at me like "Whatcha got there mom?"  So that leads me into some of Kayla's "rules."  If you break the rules, she'll let you know about it.  For instance, if I try to eat while she's eating or move wrong she'll stop eating and sometimes cry... because I broke the rules.  Likewise, if she's eating and I talk too loud to Cody across the room... that's also against the rules.  The deadly sin is being in the car and stopping at a red light.  That is VERY MUCH AGAINST THE RULES.  And Kayla will scream and howl like a banshee until the car is in motion again.  Once the motion resumes, baby is happy again.  I joke with her that's she always changing the rules on me, because I'll do something and she'll get mad about it, and I often say to her, "Sorry I didn't know that was against the rules today."

She has been hilarious this month with peeking over the top of her bassinets.  We placed her in the opposite way to look at her mobile, and Cody and I were talking next to her... we turned around to see a little head peaking up at us.

She's like, "Hi Guys!  I'm in here you know."

So funny.  She does this in the morning too.

Kayla loves to "feel the breeze" in her hair. She always gets big smiles when the wind blows on her.  She also really likes it when we blow on her too.  Sometimes, if she is having a melt down we'll blow in her face, and she'll be kind of shocked/happy by it and she'll stop crying. 

Daddy also is trying to get Kayla to practice "standing."  He'll tell her ok... let's go... get your balance.  I'm going to let go and you're going to stand up on your own.  She lasts about a second before she tumbles and he grabs her back up.  She does the same thing trying to sit on her own.  She can sit assisted pretty well, but if nothing is in front of her or supporting her, she will fall forward pretty quickly.

She still doesn't like to pose for the camera and will give us her mean mug.  Here is Cody doing his too!  HA!  I cracked up when I saw this selfie on his phone.

Crazy hair girl!

Here she is on her piano mat.  She LOVES playing on this mat.  It's pretty much what we do all day long.  I have lots of toys and books around her, that we rotate and she plays with throughout the day.

Of course the goal is to roll around and get off the mat as quickly as possible.

Here she is in her "supergirl" pose.  She has been doing this ALL the time lately.  She does it while she's standing up too.

Sweet baby girl!

 Happy in our swing.  Normally, when she shows signs of being tired of being on her mat, we go into the swing to relax.

Happy baby girl.

Breastfeeding journey update...  This month, I got my La Vie breast massager, and I've noticed that I've been getting quite a bit more milk when I pump.  At one point, I was only getting between 4-6 ounce a day, and now I'm around 8-10 ounces a day.  So my milk output seems to be pretty good, but Kayla still isn't gaining a ton of weight.  She's just a little peanut.  We started "Ready, Set, Food" this month to help prevent food allergies.  So that has changed the supplement bottles that I've been giving her.  The mixture needs to be added to breast milk, and it can get pretty thick... so I've found that it needs to be mixed with at least 3 ounces of milk to have a good consistency.  So at first, I was giving her 3 "extra" bottles a day.  One was two ounces and the other two were between 1-1.5 ounces, and I gave her those after a feeding.  But now I've gone to one 3 ounce bottle to replace a feeding, and then I come back with a quick feeding after that and one to two 1 ounce extra bottles a day.  Although, I've found that most days she has been fighting me to take a full bottle.  She'll take the bottle up until the last half an ounce, and then it's a fight to get her to finish it.  I was hoping that meant that maybe she was getting enough while eating, but she's still not gaining a ton of weight.  She's gained just over a pound this month, and baby's her age are supposed to gain 1-2 pounds a month. So she's definitely on the lower side still.  I also think that she's had trouble with allergies this month (I have too).  I've noticed she's scratched at her eyes and has had a plugged up nose.  The nose has made nursing challenging sometimes.  I regularly have to squirt her nose with saline spray to help open up her nose so that she can eat better.  This month we are going to start trying baby cereal, so that will be interesting to see how it changes her eating patterns, and to see if it helps her gain weight.  I can mix the ready, set, packets into her cereal instead of a 3 ounce bottle so I can change up how I give her, her extra milk too.

Here's a shot of my angry baby.  I think I took this after she was upset that her nose was clogged and she couldn't eat.  We've had some really good days together and then other days that were tough.  Some days she'll take a nap around 11am just fine, and those days she usually has a good day.  But other days she won't take that nap and then she's tired/crabby/crying the whole day until she eventually falls asleep for her 2-3pm nap.  Her inconsistent napping has made it hard for me to try to work from home this month.  I've been waking up early and trying to get my work in before she gets up for the day, but I can usually only get an hour or two in before she wakes up.  Then I'm working around her for the rest of my time that I need to get in.  Luckily, I don't have to call into too many meetings so I don't have to worry if she gets fussy while I'm trying to work. But it definitely been an adjustment and a challenge at times.

 

 More cute pictures playing outside

 You can tell we've spent a lot of time out here this month haha.

Sweet girl in her jammies.

Super girl!

 

Towards the end of the month, we started to feel better about the Coronavirus and started to venture out to hang out with some people.  Here are Kayla and Maia.  Maia was sooo adorable with Kayla.  She was soooo excited to see Kayla, and kept saying "baby."

 

At first Kayla was a little scared when we got to Hannah's house.  It was our first outing pretty much ever!  So once we got there, she had a scared cry and big crocodile tears.  Luckily, Hannah has the same piano mat that we do, so we set her on it and turned on her tunes, and by the stomp, stomp, stomp song Kayla was giving smiles and happy again.  She was loving Maia.

Maia kept saying "Baby!  Me!" and she'd point to the couch.  She wanted to hold Kayla sooo bad.  Here they are! And she kept bringing her over a bunch of toys to play with too. 

I love this picture so much!

Maia was all about her baby!  Hannah told me that later on Maia was laying on the piano pretending to be a baby and going "goo goo gah gah"  Haha too funny!  We were actually able to go over to hang out with them two times this month.  The next time we got to meet Sam and Kyle.  Sam is such a natural with babies!  Kayla took right to her.

Baby girl at home playing on her mat.

Look at my cutest girl!  Doesn't she look so grown up with the little pony tail??  Kayla has always had quite a bit of hair, so she's never liked headbands.  Hannah showed me these little bow clips that Maia wears, and we tried it on Kayla and she didn't seem bothered by them.  So I was instantly like yaaaay!  I have a way for my baby to wear a bow!  So I bought her a whole bag of clips.

My sweetest girl!

 

 We also got to see grandma, and grandma was able to hold the baby.  Kayla was smiling and happy to see her.  

We also went to Aunt Becky's 40th birthday party.  My phone was at full capacity, and it wouldn't let me take any additional pictures or videos on it.  So I didn't do too well with getting pictures taken.  This was the first big gathering that Kayla has been to since we went to Hancock.  She was fine with letting Allisa and Aunt Becky hold her, but her smiles were tough to come by.  Abby on the other hand was super smiley and very snuggly.  It was so nice to get the girls together, Becky and I have quite a few plans to get together for the next month while I'm still working only part time.