London Claire is Seven Months

I thought saying I had a six month old sounded SO OLD, but now that she's seven months, that sounds EVEN OLDER! Like she's not even a baby anymore! Where is the time going? I should probably start planning her first birthday party ... no but seriously.

(disclaimer: I started this post on the 22nd. sorry it's taken me eight days to finish - worst blogger ever)

Age: seven months two days

Height: I don't know - I need to use the tape measure Kelly bought her for Christmas!

Weight: 18lbs 4oz as of yesterday

Hair: no real change, but starting to show some curls around her face. it's finally grown in enough so she doesn't have bald patches or baby hairs everywhere, which means the pigtails are back

Eyes: no change here either - just as gorgeous as ever

Favorite outfit: I am loving her little pink sweatsuit from Gap. She's wearing mostly 6-9 month clothes now, so sad to pack away all her 3-6 month stuff and the 6 month clothes she barely wore! but the good news is, now that she's wearing some 9 month clothes, she FINALLY got to wear her osh kosh b'gosh overalls I bought her before she was born. they were on super clearance at Buy Buy Baby and they're the exact same ones I had as a baby - I've been counting down the days until these fit!

Sleep: we pushed up bedtime in an attempt to get her to sleep later. I wouldn't say we've seen consistent improvement yet, but there have been a few nights she's slept 7:30-6:15 and a few that she's woken up around 5, ate, and went back to sleep until 8:15. those mornings are my favorite! naps are still a struggle, but as soon as she gets in the car, she's out - she can't resist the "road massage" as ryan calls it

Eating: she loves food! especially "grown-up" food. bread, english muffins, crackers, nilla wafers, greek yogurt, scrambled eggs, all sorts of fruits and veggies. she really loves baked apples from school. what's so great about her "school food" is that they prepare everything in-house with no added salt and sugar so she can have a lot of food while she is at daycare. she normally takes 3x 7oz bottles, some juice (all natural prune juice mixed with water - we had a serious bout with constipation a few weeks ago!) and three "meals" of food while she's there. plus nursing for a long time when she first wakes up and 2x in the evening.

Illness: nothing in the past month, minus the serious constipation I mentioned earlier (which was fixed by feeding her nothing but prunes and prune juice for like three days straight) and I almost clipped her finger off with the baby nail clippers. now that's a daddy job. she got both parts of her flu shot and I'm really hoping we're able to get through the winter without any serious illness

Development: we decided that she is officially "talking" and wrote down her first words in her baby book. "Hi Dada" and she know also says "mama" and "nono", and mimics the intonation of "I love you". she gives kisses and hi-5s. still no teeth, fine by me!

Movement: she loves to walk while holding our fingers. still not crawling, though I think she did go forward once at daycare. Just starting to pull up! I am beginning to think she will walk before she crawls, she loves to stand and play with stand-up toys at school (need to get one for home, stat!) and she can go from sitting to crawling position, but not the other way around (which makes her crazy, she does ab crunches all the time on her changing table, trying to sit up)

Favorite toy: tough to say - she alternates what she's "in to". but she loves books, especially hard ones that she can chew and play with. she likes bath time a lot. we have started letting her watch little snippets of kids shows here and there (sesame street, little einsteins) and play with a fisher price app on my phone to keep her occupied, which I feel sort-of guilty about but it's not like we're using the TV to babysit her constantly.
Funniest habit: She has discovered her voice and she loves to screech as loud as she possibly can. Especially in our room, with the vaulted ceilings. And especially at 7am. So cute, though, seriously. Also, she loves to feed herself, but her dexterity is not quite where it needs to be, so she gets the food to her mouth and then starts chewing on nothing. It's really funny.

Best moment of last week: Aside from her saying mama, she pulled herself up for the first time on my shoulders, and then again in the car on the steering wheel. I see a lot of bruises in our future! Also, we got to attend the NC State / Carolina game, totally on a whim, and she was a champ. The Wolfpack are undefeated while London is in attendance!

Recipe: Baked Gnocch' & Cheese

You know what's so annoying? When a recipe has the ingredients listed not-at-all in the order they're using. I'm constantly having to scroll up and down on my phone to see quantities and make sure I didn't miss anything .. and you know I normally miss at least one ingredient somehow. Once I accidentally added red bell pepper to a dish instead of crushed red pepper. But whatever, it works.

So we had some company Friday night and with the craziness of work, I had absolutely nothing planned for dinner. Somehow, this got thrown together. So rich, but so delicious. Perfect iced-in sort of meal (yeah, we had an "ice storm", what of it?)

I sort-of used this as a guide. And forgot to take any pictures before we devoured it, so photo credit goes to CookingStoned.TV. Wow, really? That's the name? Eh, makes sense.

Ingredients

• 1 lb gnocchi
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tbsp flour
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1/4 cup shredded cheddar
• 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella
• Grated Parmesan

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375
2. Add gnocchi to pot of boiling water and boil for two minutes, then drain
3. Meanwhile, melt butter in a small sauce pan over medium low heat
4. While whisking constantly, add garlic powder, then flour, then buttermilk, then cheeses in small handfuls until completely melted
5. Spread cooked gnocchi in a small, lightly greased baking dish (I used 8x8)
6. Cover with cheese mixture
7. Top with Parmesan
8. Bake for 25 minutes

London Claire is Famous

I'm sure you're saying "duh" but for real this time. My daughter, at the ripe old age of six months, was on the local news this weekend.

And just in case embedding the video doesn't work, or if you want to pass around the video to show all your friends and family how cute my kid and husband are ... here's the link.

http://www.wralsportsfan.com/ncsu/video/11972860/#/vid11972860

Newborn Photos

Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure I never posted London's newborn photos. That's cool, I'm only six months late, it's fine. 

As per usual, the photos were taken by Emily Forsberg and despite London NOT being one of those sleepy, pliable newborns, Emily made the best of it and we ended up with a few very sweet shots. Such precious memories of our tiny tiny girl!

Here's a little secret for moms-to-be and photographers - London wouldn't lay down on a table or chair or anything on top of the blanket. So I laid on the table, draped the blanket across me, and she laid on my chest. Amazingly (because Emily is that talented), you'd never know the difference. Desperate times call for desperate measures, am I right?

OK, so here are a few of my favorites. Hard to believe she was just one week old here *tears*.

Our First Family Photos

I've mentioned several times how generous and talented our friend Emily is, especially when it comes to photography. She did our maternity shots, newborn shots of L, and in November did our first family photo shoot. Despite a very distracted and eventually fussy 4 month old, and an equally distracted and rambunctious dog, Emily was extremely patient (as always) and we ended up with some beautiful shots. They're all up on Facebook, but in case you didn't see them, I wanted to share a few of my favorites.

I'll be damned if this girl doesn't LOVE her daddy

standing up in her little tutu

just love her expression here

our christmas card photo

recreation of last year's photo ( http://eckersons.blogspot.com/2011/12/coming-soon.html )

these two are too adorable

sweet baby

if only we could get all three of us smiling at the same time

her expressions kill me

one of my absolute favs

 

gimme that face!

London Claire is Six Months Old

The updates are getting more and more delayed, but at least I'm still posting them, and still taking her monthly photos. That's gotta count for something.

Age: six months two weeks (eek!)
Height: twenty-seven inches (as of her 6mo checkup)
Weight: eighteen pounds one ounce (as of last week)
Hair: lighter brown, finally regrowing in (at all different lengths. hello mullet)
Eyes: beautiful blue and still has those killer lashes

From our family photo shoot in November

Favorite outfit: too many to count, what with all the holiday gear. but yesterday's was a hoot - these boots are too much.

apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur

Sleep: despite being a complete wreck with traveling for two weeks, and despite a few minutes extra of fussing when we put her down last night, she sleeps awesome at night. pretty much every night is 8-5:30. naps are another story, but i talked to her pediatrician and she said "keep offering them, but don't push it"
Eating: we've tried a number of foods recently, and her favorite appears to be greek yogurt. she also likes bananas in the mesh feeder, and crackers. she finally seems to be taking to 'baby food' but we do a mix of the purees and table food - mostly fruits & veggies with a few grains, no meat yet.
Illness: after two ear infections in a month's time, she seems to just be fighting a pretty persistent cold & teething. runny nose but not much else so we're grateful.
Development: I could go on for days here. She has started talking and singing, and says "dada" all the time (no mama yet). I swear yesterday she said "hi dada" and she does inflections in her sounds like she's saying "i love you". she sings to herself, especially if she's overtired or her teeth hurt. she's starting to get some attachment / separation anxiety - she will reach for me if someone else is holding her or if she's on the ground and wants to be held, and cries if i don't immediately pick her up when i get to daycare. she is definitely starting to develop relationships, so it was neat to see her with my mom over the holidays. she also has a "boyfriend" at school - they hold hands during music class. i'm not ready for this!!
Movement: rolling all over (especially when i put her on the changing table, it's like trying to catch a greased pig), scooting / crawling backwards, starting to learn how to pull up, and walks a little while holding my fingers.she sits really well but can't get herself from laying down to sitting yet.

standing up in her six month photos

Favorite toy: she loves the doorway jumper my mom got at a consignment sale. it came with us to my mom's house for christmas and ben even used it as a swing for her a few times.

Funniest habit: ben is still pretty much the only person that can make her laugh - there is no better feeling in this world than watching your husband act like a complete fool and hearing those precious baby belly laughs. watching her open presents was adorable, though it was mostly just eating the paper / tissue. oh, and she loves dogs. i thought it was just lucy but she liked my mom's dog too - it's pretty cute to see her watch them and grab for them.
Best moment of last week: seeing how happy and excited she was to see us after we were in vegas for four days. ben brought her into the bed while i was still sleeping and she was ALL smiles, it was awesome. this is not in the past week, but it was really fun to celebrate her first christmas and also get to see her first snow while we were in virginia!

checking out the snow with dad on christmas eve at gigi's house

What I'm looking forward to: it'd be nice if she ever cut this tooth she's been working on for weeks!