Lily

This will be a post about Lily, our precious little Blümchen. She is 7, almost 8, months old already! So what is she doing these days?

Well, the big news is, Lily has figured out how to get around. She is "army crawling", pulling herself forward with her arms. This works great on our tiled living room floor, and we are glad to have in-floor heating now that it is winter. On carpet she will also get on her hands and knees and rock back and forth, so it probably won't be long before she will crawl on all fours.

Another biggie in our house is that she is sleeping through the night! Can you believe it? We still kind of can't. Our nights with her were REALLY rough and we had decided to "sleep train" her after New Year's, since we were all tired, Lily included. But for a few nights now she has slept 10+ hours without us having to go in to her (or one of us actually sleeping beside her, as we did). Maybe it is because she is crawling now and just pooped at the end of the day. Maybe she just sleeps better in her crib. She was still sleeping in her nice big bassinet until a few nights ago. It has wheels so we could rock her back to sleep when she woke. Which she did every hour sometimes. With her becoming so mobile it was not safe anymore, so we switched her to the crib. Whatever the reason for this miraculous change, we sure hope it will last!

Lily sleeping through the night also means that our breastfeeding relationship has come to an end, as I had only been nursing her at night for a few weeks. She gets all formula now and does great on it. Well, she also eats some "real" food, but more about that later. Lily had never been an enthusiastic nurser and while I wanted to give her the best possible start in life we often struggled with breastfeeding. So I am happy we lasted that long. Lily still has zero teeth and she does not like baby food. If we try to feed her pureed baby food she will taste it and then not open her mouth anymore. If you are tricky you might get a couple spoonfuls into her, but that's it. She prefers chunky! (Maybe because she is a cute little chunk herself? :-) She loves to feed herself Cheerios, and will eat cut-up banana, avocado, soft-cooked carrot and potato pieces.

What else can we tell you about Lily? She is a very happy baby and a joy to have around. She babbles and laughs and loves to be hugged and played with. She will giggle when you tickle her and laugh out loud when you dance with her or let her be an "airplane". She is beautiful. People say Lily inherited her looks from the Swedish side of Neil's family, with her cute button nose and big blue eyes. Neil says she reminds him of his grandma Violet. Seeing her grow from a helpless newborn into a little person is a miracle all over again. She is so different from Finn! Everything seems to be the opposite, beginning with her birth! She seems to be more temperamental than Finn. Lily can be LOUD, and she is tough. We sometimes have to scold Finn for being too rough with her, and Lily is the only one laughing! Finn didn't crawl until he was almost 10 months old, but he started getting teeth at 4 months. Finn slept well at night and was a challenge during the day (at least for the first few months); with Lily it was the other way around. Lily loves going to sleep with a soother in her mouth, Finn wasn't interested in one. Lily likes bottle better than breast, Finn nursed until he was 14 months old and HATED bottles. It will be fun to discover more of their differences as they grow older. We have truly been blessed with two little miracles!

Wow, what a long post. If you have read all of it - congratulations. Reward yourself with a little video of Lily practising her newest skill: