8 Months Old!

I think I envisioned 8 months being a magical age.  Not sure why exactly, but for me, not so much!  The last month has been tough for many reasons.  And it seems to be getting tougher.  I find myself constantly asking for advice, none of which really helps.  I've adjusted her schedule a few times to try to figure out something that will work better, and it's all just a crapshoot.  It makes me feel like I'm missing something key, but that I can't figure out what it is.  I'm afraid to accept things how they are and just hope we move out of this stage, because I also fear I'm setting Kinsey up for failure for the near future.  For example, she is clingy and wants to be entertained constantly, or she will whine or cry.  If I pick her up, she is perfectly fine.  However, I can't hold her all day long, that's impossible--and that will set her up to need constant attention much longer than she should as she gets older.  So I struggle to maintain a balance to keep her from being bored but also let her work things out on her own without me going crazy listening in the meantime.

Starting out this post so negative brings me to another struggle.  Because we adopted Kinsey, I don't want to admit out loud that I'm not enjoying much of parenting right now.  It's just difficult at this stage.  I remember before we had Kinsey I had a hard time listening to other mothers complain about the difficulty of parenting, because I would be jealous and wish I could be the one with those difficulties.  Now that I'm there, I'm totally understanding how difficult it is no matter how thankful and blessed I am to have her in my life!  I'm also learning how much talking about my struggles can be cathartic while also gaining much needed emotional support from others.  One last struggle--finding friends who have felt this way.  Lately it seems that when I talk about what I'm having a hard time with, I can't find anyone who has gone through the same sort of things.  Yesterday I did seek one friend out and was able to connect a little bit in this area, so for that I'm thankful.  I'm looking forward to leaning on her for support in the next few months.

As for her development, Kinsey is of course crawling all over the place and pulling herself up like last month.  She has also learned how to get down from a standing position.  That was a milestone I never expected would be anything important, but it is!  Before she could do it she would pull herself up but then cry after a while cause she was stuck there.  Now she's up and down on her own so a little less required on my part.  Sometimes she will pull herself up, decide to get down, then as soon as she is down she wants to pull back up.  So she ends up doing squats over and over.  Too cute!

She also is eating three meals a day of solids, so we're down to just 3 bottles a day.  Sometimes feeding is easy and sometimes she is fussy throughout.  I can't figure it out.  Sometimes she grabs the spoon and shoves it in her mouth and sometimes she will just open her mouth and make it much easier on me!  She is starting the get the pincer grasp but not fully there yet.  She is able to pick up the puffs I give her and put most of them in her mouth.  I'm looking forward to the stage when I can give her pieces of food for her to feed herself.  She now has two teeth.

I threw the Baby Wise out the window and now she gets a bottle before her naps.  Sometimes she will sleep up to two hours, but mostly it is an hour and a half max.  I'd like her to nap longer because part of her fussiness I think is tiredness.  If she could sleep a half hour longer at each nap, I think she'd be better, but I have no idea how to help her do that.  And sometimes she will still take a third nap, but usually I will put her down for a third nap but then she won't go down, even though she's obviously tired.  She sleeps about 10 hours a night.

Clapping is definitely happening now.  Last month it had just started so I wasn't positive if it was on purpose, but it is.  Still super cute! 

As for happenings, David has been home helping to take care of Kinsey since he has been off work now that he is retired.  He is looking for a job very aggressively, and we're praying it will happen soon!  Having David home has been great for my own sleep, because I either get to sleep in or take longer naps.  I will miss that when he goes back to work.

Grammy was here over my birthday and got to spend lots of time with Kinsey.  She gave us some nice breaks and made her yummy home made applesauce.

We go to the park a lot.  Going outside helps her demeanor, and she loves to swing on the baby swings.  I'm grateful to live next to a park so I don't have to drive, I can just walk over there anytime!

Kinsey was a ladybug for Halloween.  We went to two parties, one at a friend's house and one at our babysitter's house.

My cousin watched her a couple weekends ago so David and I could go on a date night.  We went to Outback, it was very nice. 

We also started trying out a new church called Revolution.  It's a church plant that is about 2 or 3 years old.  I heard about it through MOPS and decided to check it out.  So far we like it.  Also, the nursery there is awesome.  The last two Saturdays we went, they had 3 workers in there for 4 babies.

All that said, I'm still grateful to have her in my life, I wouldn't trade her for the world, and I think she is super stinkin' cute!  But if you can relate to my struggle and have any advice or encouragement, comment away!

Here are the pictures from last month!

7 Months

Two big events this past month!  Kinsey started crawling, then she got her first two tooth!  The crawling came on the last couple days on our trip back east.  She had been up on her hands and knees rocking for a few weeks, then finally put the pieces together.  I think her crawl is so adorable!  She LOVES to chase the cat and crawl on the dogs.  She also immediately started trying to pull herself up when she's near the couch or anything vertical.  She can do it on her own occasionally if what she is leaning on is the right height.

When we got home from our trip back east, we thought it would take a few days for Kinsey to get back into her routine.  She was really fussy and needed a lot of attention.  I was getting worried that it was some new personality thing that she needed to be held all the time to be happy.  One day she was super fussy, and I just was so stressed out about how to change this in her.  Then the next day I felt a tooth!  I had been feeling her bottom gums every few days for several weeks, but that day I finally felt something sharp.  We gave her some ibuprofen, and it was like we had a new baby!  So now every time she is fussy I blame it on teething, ha.

Kinsey also started clapping yesterday.  Well, it's more like throwing her hands together at the same time.  But she laughs when she does it, so cute!

Here are the pictures from the last month.

Six Months

Kinsey turned 6 months old a week and a half ago. 

During the month she started eating much more solid food.  She's had carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, peas, and green beans.  The only thing she seems to really enjoy is her cereal, but she won't refuse any of the others.

She is getting much closer to crawling.  I am looking forward to it so she can discover new things on her own.  Everyone tells me I will wish she was back to being stationary, but I'm just in the looking-forward-to-it stage right now. 

We really cracked down on the "crying it out" for her naptimes.  It works great.  She was getting too darn heavy for me to try to rock her in my arms to soothe her to sleep.  We had only been halfway letting her calm herself, but now we are all the way there.  It is much less stressful.  I don't find either way to be good or bad, because if you're able to soothe your baby to sleep and she goes down and stays down, I think that's great.  It's sweet having her fall asleep in my arms, but I'm just not strong enough and she will wake up and start crying anyways if she's not fully asleep when I set her down.  She really doesn't cry much now when we put her down, 5-10 minutes is usually all.  I tell myself in the midst of her crying that it's good for her to burn off extra energy!

We finalized the adoption on September 20th.  It was great, I posted a previous blog about it.

Bathtime has become one of our favorites.  I put her in the Bumbo and she kicks her feet like crazy and splashes the water with her hands.  It will entertain her for quite a while so I can just soak in the tub with her and relax myself. 

Finally, at the very end of the month, Kinsey got sick.  It was a Thursday night and she was unusally calm before bedtime.  I went to feed her the last feeding, and she wouldn't take it, which was strange.  I figured no big deal, she just wasn't hungry for some reason.  As I was taking her back to her room to put her down, she threw up all over me.  Now I definitely know the difference between baby vomit and spit up!  She never had a fever, but was dehydrated from vomiting twice and having diarrhea.  So we gave her some pedialyte when she woke up the next morning (she still slept all through the night, whew) and eventually gave her some formula.  She still had diarrhea for a few days after, but was mostly back to normal by the next day. 

David and I both got sick too the next day, right before we were scheduled to fly back East.  We decided to delay our flights several hours so we could recover.  It ended up being ok; we made it to Florida without any major bumps, although we were pretty drained.  I found out the day Kinsey got sick that my friend's baby got sick too, and they had been in the nursery together at MOPS on Tuesday morning, so something must have been going around there.  In the middle of it all David and I were kinda miserable but looking back it probably wasn't that bad, and now we know a little bit of what to expect when sickness comes to the Gibson household next time!

Here are the pics from the previous month!

Stainless Steel or China?

I went to MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) on Tuesday morning at church.  I was very inspired.  The speaker was a pastor at a local church plant and his message centered around how we shape our children.  I can't just hope my child will be a certain way, I need to model the behavior myself.  That's a pretty "duh" statement but I needed to hear it. 

At the end of his message he said something I didn't agree with, though.  I'm not sure if he was trying to be funny, if there was truth behind it, or what, but it got me thinking.  He said when he speaks to men he likes to think of it as throwing a stainless steel coffee mug around, letting it get banged up, because it can take the abuse.  But when he speaks to women he must treat them like china and be gentle, because they are breakable.  Huh?  This got me thinking about how I receive messages and whether I am more breakable or more durable.

I am spiritually dry.  Yuck.  One thing that helps is when people are honest with me when they see me going in a wrong direction.  I'll give you an example of how this has recently occurred.

I was at small group several weeks ago talking about my lack of understanding the need for prayer, if God is omnicient and omnipresent.  I was going around in circles about my thoughts and disbeliefs, and my dear friend said, "You need to stop overthinking everything."  I appreciated her saying this.  I don't actually agree with her statement, but it was a great example of her being bold enough to say something when she saw me faltering. 

I wish I had a little more of this in my life and was treated more like stainless steel rather than china.  Being treated like china seems to allow me to make excuses rather than encourage me to change.  I don't doubt for many women they are more like china in this area, but I guess I'm a stainless steel kind of a girl.

Thankful Tuesday

It's not Tuesday yet, but most of you won't read this until at least Tuesday.  I'll be very busy toward the end of this week, so I thought I'd do my thankful post early.

1.  Yesterday I went to the grocery store.  I always try to park next to a cart return spot so I can put Kinsey in the car and the return area is right next to my car.  That way I don't have to worry about lugging her to the cart return spot and back to the car again.  This time, however, there weren't any spots open right next to the cart return.  Someone had left their cart in between two parking spaces, so I parked in one of them and used that cart.  That saved me one trek carrying Kinsey.  After I was finished shopping, I put the groceries in the cart and was not looking forward to the carrying that was about to happen.  But from behind an elderly getleman said, "I'll take your cart!" and I replied, "Oh AWESOME, thank you!!".  We went our separate ways and I put Kinsey in car, but as I was about to get in I happened to look back toward the man that took my cart, and he put it away in a return cart slot.  The man didn't even need my cart but was just being kind!  That warms my heart, and I was so thankful.

2.  Today was our adoption court hearing.  Several friends came, and some even slipped out of work to stop by and see us, even if they couldn't make the hearing.  I was thinking how wonderful it was to have friends surrounding us and supporting us constantly.  We waited for about 45 minutes, then the hearing was very short (actual time, 3 minutes).  We took pictures afterwards with the judge and then more outside with our group.  What struck me today was that the hearing was very short, without frills, just all business.  Our friends didn't come to get anything out of it for themselves or to be entertained in any way; they came just to support and surround us with love.  Have I mentioned we have great friends?  I am thankful!

Group picture after the hearing before we went to the Good Egg for brunch.

Still Thankful

I'm still thankful, even though I missed the last two Thankful Thursdays.  Last Thursday I was working and this past Thursday I seemed to have on thing after another going on.  So we'll do a double-thankful-Saturday!


1.  We found a place to send our dogs to be trained.  They stay at the "Wolf Whisperer's" boarding place and she trains them for a month.  When the month is complete, we have graduation day where she works with us to take over the Alpha role.  Then they come home and we work with them 30 minutes a day for two weeks.  That is going to be the hard part for me.  She has a lifetime guarantee, so that is a good thing.  We know that it is actually David and I who are going to be the hardest to teach, not the dogs.  They will pick up the training easily with consistency.  That is why we decided to send them to doggie boarding school, so that we know the trainer will be consistent with them.  Then it's up to us.  What I am thankful for in all of this is that we really liked the trainer and have high hopes for a more peaceful house, and fewer bruises on my legs!

2.  I have been getting a few more hours at work.  I started a second per diem (on call/as needed) job which won't likely give me many hours, but it could turn into more down the road.  I also am going to get a few more hours at my regular job.  I was freaking out a little bit last month only working one day a week.  There was no reason to freak out, because we can survive without me working, but it makes it more comfortable and less stressful when I do work at least a couple days a week.  So I am thankful to have just enough hours now to have a good balance, at least for the next month.

A Couple Mini-Milestones

1.  She started saying "Muh."  Then "Muh muh."  Then "Muh muh muh."  Haven't been able to catch it on video yet.  I tried but then she stopped.  She's not ready for the world to hear it yet.

2.  She started opening her mouth for the spoon when I'm feeding her.  It's amazing how much easier feeding her is when she understands it and wants it.

(Nevermind the very messy counter--eeek)