Fiona is Eight Months Old!

Please excuse the brief interruption from my Christmas catch-up blogging to announce that Fiona turned 8 months old this week! My how time flies when you are delirious and sleep-deprived.


First the good news....Fiona's weigh-in this week showed that she gained 11 ounces in two weeks! She suddenly is in love with food (although new foods and slimy textures take some encouragement) and she has been downing avocado, butter, cheese, and greek yogurt. The threat of a feeding tube is no longer much of a worry and we don't have to take her in to be weighed for another month.

Fiona now eats 3 meals a day. A couple months ago, she was starting to show interests in self-feeding, but abruptly stopped. Last week, she started wanting to self-feed again, which has admittedly been kinda nice. She even grabs at the spoon and helps guide it into her mouth. Or, sometimes she just steals it altogether.

Fiona still prefers dry foods- puffs are one of her favorites. She also loves baby mum mums, toast with butter on it, and freeze dried apples and pears broken into tiny pieces. She tolerates sweet potatoes, cheese, yogurt, and avocado too. She usually rejects food several times before giving up. At least she's eating!

I'm always trying to get photos of the fluff of hair on top of Fiona's head. Here is one of my better attempts...

Fiona has become a much more mellow baby than she used to be. The first 3+ months of her life were spent crying if I wasn't holding her. Although I miss her cute little snorty cry, it is nice to see her more content. She is very happy to just sit and watch what is going on. She isn't showing any signs of crawling, so it seems that we have a while before we have to worry about her getting into things.

Fiona's greatest interest continues to be Gwen. If Gwen is in the room, Fiona's eyes are on her. This is sometimes rather unhelpful if I'm trying to get Fiona to look at me for a photo.

Fiona finally looked at me after several attempts...

Speaking of Gwen, I love how darling she is with Fiona. Nobody can make Fiona laugh like Gwen can. I love walking in the room to find them cuddling. Totally melts my heart...

Besides Gwen and food, Fiona also loves her mommy. She seems to be becoming a mama's girl and will get really excited when I walk into the room. She is also starting to reach just a bit which is really cute.

Fiona also loves her exersaucer which is nice for moments when I need her to be on her own...

Although she loves the exersaucer, she is using it less and less because she is becoming really good at sitting on her own.

What else does Fiona love, you ask? The taste of the air. Her tongue is often poking out. Actually, often is an understatement. Her tongue is usually out. Just a little bit.

You may be wondering (ok, probably not), how sleeping is going. Fiona takes two naps a day, and they are approximately 45 minutes long each. I've tried numerous techniques attempting to increase the length of her naps, but haven't found much success yet. We sometimes try to get her to take a third nap late in the afternoon, but she usually never actually falls asleep during these attempts. Nighttime sleep is at least better than daytime sleep. She is usually down by 7pm and sleeps a good 4 hours before the fun begins. After that, she is usually up 2 more times for a feeding, but she often takes quite a while to go back to sleep afterwards. So in short, don't ask me for sleep advice because I'm obviously not qualified to give it.

We've been using the "cry it out" method for getting Fiona to sleep and she usually only fuses for about 15 -20 minutes before giving up. This is not my favorite method for getting babies to sleep, but it's the only one that has even come close to working for us.

One night Fiona was having a harder time settling down. I finally gave in and got her up. Her poor little cheeks were so red. I almost gave up crying it out after that.

At least she didn't forget to keep her tongue out. Side note: Fiona is the only baby on the face of the planet with failure to thrive and a double chin.

At least I know Fiona doesn't hold a grudge against me for letting her cry sometimes at night. When I get her up, she doesn't fail to greet me with a huge grin!