First Daycare Cold

It took all of 2 or 3 days for Emily to catch her first daycare cold! It's mostly a cough with a few sniffles. She doesn't seem to be too bothered by it. Greg is bothered more because he caught it from her. What can we say, she seems to like to share!

We had a relatively quiet weekend at home. It rained a bit which was much needed for our lawn and it gave us the chance to get some things done around the house. As you can see in the pictures, Emily enjoyed reading some stories with Daddy and had a bath. As you can tell, Emily looked like she was ready to take a nap after bathtime. Emily also needed to catch up on sleep in a big way. She is so nosy, that she barely naps at daycare. Maybe 45 minutes, but not much more. At home, she takes 2 naps, each 1.5-2 hours on most days. Hopefully she gets used to all of the action there and her new surroundings. The lack of sleep seems to have started to affect her at night, she has started waking up several times at night. She just sits in her crib and talks for awhile. Fortunately, we don't have to get up with her, but we hear her so we are up, too. She has been sleeping 11-12 hours a night since 3.5 months, so I hate to go back now.

Yesterday and today she is at daycare for half a day, but tomorrow will be her first longer day. I have training for my new school district on Wednesday and Thursday. Emily has really adjusted well to school, her teachers comment on how good she is and she seems to finally have started showing a bit more of her talkative side. We are also working at figuring out how much Emily needs in her bottles at daycare and how often she needs them. She's not going hungry, that's for sure.

6 Month Check Up and Stats

Here are Emily's 6 month pictures! She looks like she is getting longer than Cleo the monkey now! She can't let herself lie next to something for too long without grabbing onto it and pulling it towards her. Here are a few other pictures of Emily showing off her standing skills and almost sitting on her own, skills.

At her check up today, Emily weighed 16 pounds, 14 ounces which puts her in the 50-75th percentile. She is 26.5 inches long, though it took 3 measurements to get it, one time she was too long to be reasonable, one time too short, and then where they thought she should be at. She is still in the 75-90th percentile for height. Her head circumference was 17 1/8 inches, which is 75th percentile. She's stayed pretty steady with the percentages from the get-go. We'll see if it changes at all as she keeps growing.

Emily is on track developmentally. We are going to start solids in the next couple of weeks. It was important to me to nurse her exclusively through 6 months so now that we've hit that milestone, we'll bring on the solids. Emily seems ready, she likes to watch us eat. Her doctor also thinks that Emily may be an early walker and skip crawling altogether. Emily is very interested in standing. She loves it. She's been obsessed with standing since she was a month or 2 old and at her 4 month appointment, the doctor could barely get her to sit to check how steady she was, Emily wanted to stand and refused to bend her hips. This appointment she did the same thing, but did finally show her skills at sitting. She is very steady on her feet. I guess we actually need to childproof the house soon.

Emily did great with all of her shots. She calmed down very quickly after them and was in a reasonably good mood until 7 tonight when she just melted down. She's passed out now and I'm sure will have a good night's sleep. She's going to stay home and hang out with me tomorrow.

First Days at Daycare

Emily had a successful first few days at daycare. I spent the day with her there on Monday. Emily's primary teacher is out of town this week and the room seemed a bit chaotic with the other teachers in that were filling in or not used to be in charge of some of the babies. The teachers seemed to be trying to take care of the babies needs, not playing and talking to them as much. I wasn't certain that it would be the best place for Emily. To top it off, there was another baby that had just started the week before that was having some adjustment problems. She was screaming almost constantly. Emily didn't nap much and when we got home, we both needed a nap. On Tuesday, Emily went on her own. Greg dropped her off in the morning and she did great with her bottle and slept for about an hour in the morning. I picked her up around 12, so she didn't have a long day there. When I got her, she was in her swing and looked like she'd been crying. Another little boy was fussing and they said that she had picked up on him. There were 3 teachers in the room and Emily wasn't being held and almost all of the other babies were down for naps. In the evening, Emily seemed fussier than usual and more clingy. On Wednesday, she went in again and did great! Greg and I picked her up together around 1. She was happy and the teachers seemed to have gotten to know her. They commented about all of Emily's noises, she's quite the talker. They also said that she is such a sweet baby and very relaxed. I asked if she gets held much and they assured me that she does. She seemed happier and the teachers seemed to know her better, so hopefully we're on our way and we'll have smooth sailing from here. I'm eager for her primary teacher to get back on Monday. Greg talked to someone at work whose baby just moved out of Emily's room and they loved the teachers, so I think it was just a rocky start.
The room at school is so cold, so we've had to dress Emily in long pants each day. At least she is getting some wear out of some of the things that she wore at the beginning of the summer that we had to put away when it got too warm. Fortunately those clothes still fit! When Greg was putting away his clean laundry, his cycling socks somehow ended up on Emily's feet. They look a little big and certainly don't stay on any better than her size socks do!

Emily turned 6 months yesterday! She has her 6 month check up today, so I'll post her stats and her 6 month pictures later today or tomorrow. We celebrated by going to the new California Pizza Kitchen that finally opened near us. Yum! Emily is going to stay home from school tomorrow since she might be cranky from her shots. In reality, it's a great excuse to keep her home with me!

Swinging like a Monkey

This is how Greg found Emily when she woke up from her afternoon nap. Looks like she likes her monkeys. Mr. Monkey is in her hands and Molly the Monkey is on her side. Molly the Monkey will be going to day care and will hang out in Emily's crib there. Just in case she gets too attached, Aunt Jill bought a second Molly the Monkey to keep at home. Our store was out of them so we had to enlist some assistance. After Emily got up from her nap, we figured that we needed to keep the monkey trend going so we took her for a walk to the park. This is where Emily figured out how to swing like monkeys.


Here is Emily in her swing! I put her in the swing for the first time one day earlier in the week when we were at the park for a playdate and she loved it! This was her first time showing off her skills for Daddy! She isn't quite sitting on her own, yet, but seems to have plenty of balance for the swing.





Here is Emily at the bottom of the slide. She had a bit of help going down, but could hang out on her own on the flat part. We're going to be running around after her at the park in no time!

We'll keep everyone updated on the first days of day care!

Welcome to Emily's Blog

This blog is to document our life and times with our little girl, Emily. She is getting so big that we have to document it now, while we can.

Emily is almost 6 months old. She has her 6 month doctor's check up on Thursday, but all signs point to a healthy, growing girl. She is getting close to sitting up, close to rolling over, and loves to smile, laugh, and "talk."

I am going back to work for the new school year so Emily is getting ready to start day care. She'll be going to day care on site at Greg's work so he'll be close by and able to check on her some days. Although I'm not thrilled that she'll be at day care, I do know that this is the best place for her. It's an amazing facility. She'll be one of 9 babies in her room and they have 3 caregivers with the babies. They take them outside and for walks and try to have developmentally appropriate activities for them. I know it'll be hard on both Emily and me. She's used to having me with her all day. She notices when I'm not around and when I'm nearby, but doing something else, she tries to get my attention. She will take a bottle, but it will be a change for her to get one several times each day. I'm sure she'll be used to it before long. She has 2 weeks to get adjusted before I officially start back, so we will do a lot of half days to ease her into it. The first day I will spend with her there, which is what the center wants you to do. They want to help the children get adjusted as quickly as possible.

Emily is jumping in her little jumper now. Anything that keeps her on her feet she loves! We've got a few errands to run with a couple little things we need to get for "school" for her.