Seven Months Old!

Dear Liv Riley,

Today marks the start of your seventh month. Today you are closer to one year-old than zero. I honestly cannot believe I just typed that out. You seem to be growing up so very quickly. Almost in fast forward! You are such a happy girl. You smile and laugh all day long. You love to be tickled, play peek-a-boo, and be silly. You laugh at Ingrid Cate all the time. You always think she is the funniest. You don't call her anything yet, but she is working on getting you to say "Ingrid." You do say dada alllll the time. It is definitely your favorite sound. Another favorite is yaya, which Ingrid thinks is hilarious. You don't ever say mama unless you are crying and upset! You also say baba, but not really in association to your bottle. You are a very, very good eater. You didn't try baby food until you were exactly six months old. And you weren't sure about it the first couple of tries. But now you love peas, green beans, sweet potatoes, squash, and carrots. You like veggies over fruits right now. Your fruits are bananas, apples, peaches, and apricots. You still love your rice and oatmeal cereal for breakfast. You recently tried strawberry yogurt and liked it too! You can pick up your puffs and put them in your mouth like a pro! No other snacks for you because you still have zero teeth! I'm glad you are eating well because you are burning calories like wildfire. You will not sit still for more than one minute at a time. You crawl to every stationary thing you see and pull up on it. You love standing and have even taken a few steps while holding onto something. You are my wild child. I cannot keep up with you. You can crawl from room to room faster than a bullet. We try to keep you on the rugs, but you have other ideas. Ingrid always says, "Liv, you're gonna bump your noggin!" in her deep, parenting tone, every time you get on the hardwood. We laugh and laugh. We're pretty much all laughs except at nap and night. You are "successfully" sleeping in your bed, you just wake up a lot of times. You take a morning and afternoon nap. We are really lucky if one is 45 minutes to an hour and the other is 90 minutes to two hours. You wake up about 4-6 times each night. I let you have one middle-of-the-night feeding and I always put you back in your crib. This is the hard part. You cling and grab onto me with all your might. Sometimes you cry and cry. I reallllly dislike this part of parenting. I know you need to sleep in your bed and I know you need to learn to self-soothe. Especially since you are such a light sleeper and wake up multiple times. It's just so hard when you feel like you need Mommy's touch for comfort. I go in and comfort you multiple times during the night. This is our third week of "sleep camp" as I call it and it hasn't gotten much easier with time. I'm still holding out hope! It was almost a year ago to the date that we found out you were a little girl! I cannot imagine my life without you. You are such an important part of our family and I love you deep and wide.

Love,
Mommy

 *These aren't the typical photos I would post in one of your monthly letters, Liv, but they show off your personality so well, I just had to! Daddy had to lower your bed to the very bottom a couple weeks ago and having your mattress on the floor turned out to be very fun for everyone!