Please Forward To: The Stanforths: 7 Month Update

Yay! Nellie is 7 months. We just took her to the doctors the other day for a check-up. The pediatrician says that she’s a healthy, and smiley little girl! So true, Penelope was unusually happy during our visit(until she got her shots). I’ve got her stats here…

Weight…18 lbs

Height…26.8 inches

Head circumference…17.5 inches

This pediatrician was different from the one that we normally see(she was A LOT more friendly). The doc gave us her percentiles…for weight she’s in the 73^rd percentile (chubby-bubby), for height she’s in the 56^th percentile, and her head circumference is in the 95^th percentile(no surprise there; have you seen her dad’s head?).

Anyway, this month she’s been more vocal. She uses a high pitched squeal (she may give Mariah Carey a run for her money) to get our attention. It’s adorable. She also says “Hi”…sort of. She always makes this noise when we smile at her. It’s more like her version of a sigh, but it always sounds like she’s saying “hi.” It really impresses those who don’t know her too well.

There are no new developments regarding her crawling skills. She has no interest being on her belly, but she does like standing (with assistance from Mom or Dad). Maybe she’ll be one of those babies that learn to walk before they crawl. Devon and I don’t have any qualms about her not being able to crawl. The longer we post pone it, the longer we can post pone buying German baby gates(there 100euro-that’s $145 usd/gate!) Why can’t we buy US baby gates? Because no one will ship them to our APO address! The gates they sell on post are US, but they aren’t long enough-darn it!

We’ve started sleep training with her. Ever since we came back from the States, her sleep habits have been horrible. She’s been waking up every 3 hours wanting a bottle. So every 3 hours, day and night, we’ve been giving her a bottle. That’s way too much food. No wonder she is in the 73^rd percentile for weight. Anyway, with sleep training, we’ve modified her bad habit. Now she wakes up once during the night, and we only give her a 2 oz diluted bottle. She’s also been waking up less searching for her pacifier-woohoo! So now we put her down at 8:15pm (yes, 2 hours earlier than we usually put her down). Then she’s up by 7am for the day. Finally some quality sleep for Mom and Dad.

The weather here has been surprisingly nice, so we’ve been playing outside more. I’ll put the blanket out in the yard and bring her toys out. She’s really curious about the grass, and flowers. She’ll grab at them and put grass in her mouth (she’s still chewing EVERYTHING in sight).

We've recently bought P two new toys...this is big doings here. Devon and I are not fans of baby toys all over the house. But, because we sold her baby swing, we thought that we should replace it with something new. So we switched the the dust-collecting swing for a new Dino-walker. It's so cute, and it was 50% off. We thought that this would help jump start her standing and walking skills. We also bought her a new Vtech Winnie the Pooh book. My aunt bought her one of these books and Penelope LOVES it! Hopefully she likes listening to Pooh Bear as much as she likes listeing to Scout.

Okay…that’s enough text. Now for your favorite part, the pics!