Rylee: 5-9 Months at a Glance

Here are some things Rylee was doing from 5-9 months.  There are some other posts I will need to do about different trips we went on, but I wanted to writes these things down before I forgot. 

5 Months   (This was written when she was 5 months old.)

     So when Rylee was 4 months old we finally felt like we were getting the sleeping thing down.  She was sleeping 8-9 hours straight!  Only having to wake up once at night is an amazing thing.  Then Rylee decided she was too cool for that.  At five months she gradually started waking up more and more.  When I would try to put the pacifier in she would get upset because she wasn't getting what she wanted...FOOD.  That was the only thing that would put her back to sleep, and being exhausted and wanting to sleep myself, I would just feed her.  This kept going until one night she woke up every three hours to be fed.  She went longer when she was 2 months old!  So we started letting her cry it out, and gradually she has gotten better.  I am still working on getting her back to where she was, but we are going in the right direction:)
      At five months Rylee started talking more.  She also learned how to grunt/growl.  It was awesome!  And then one night when she was upset, she decided to mix the growl and the cry and she sounded like a monster.  We couldn't stop laughing.  She didn't find it as funny as we did.
     Rylee also learned to sit by herself.  It is now her second favorite position.  Standing is still number one:)  And being on her stomach is still at the very bottom of that list.  She is doing better.  She will tolerate it for a couple minutes before she gets frustrated.

6 Months

      We started introducing food to Rylee.  She loves food! She sits in her chair with her arms sticking straight out and her mouth wide open.  The only food she doesn't like is rice cereal with formula (It has to be breast milk...dang it! But we figured out that if we add some fruit baby food in to the rice cereal she can't taste the formula:) ), peas, and green beans.  With these foods, she either twitches or keeps opening her mouth for more but won't swallow.  Gradually the food starts coming out her mouth.  With the peas she gags. I don't blame her though:)

     She finally tolerates tummy time!  She gets there by going from sitting and gradually walking her hands forward until she ends up on her tummy.  Initially she had some good nose dives but after some time she had it down.  She still wont roll over. Crazy girl!

Kenny is feeding her prunes...and she loved them! Due to me having to change her diaper multiple times that night, they are officially banned. 

Rylee loves Dr. Suess books.  They are the only books she will sit still for.  And Kenny is very good at reading them to her:)

7 Months

    She learned how to get up on her hands and knees.  She would get frustrated because the only direction she could go was backwards.  On December 20th Rylee learned how to go from her stomach back to sitting.  Finally!  Now when she gets sick of being on her stomach, she can fix the problem! And, more importantly, she crawled!  I thought we were weeks away.  She didn't have any sort of army crawl or forward movement beforehand.  I went to the bathroom to get something and when I came back she was crawling! There was a little box about 4 feet away and she went and got it. Unfortunately that was the night that Kenny stayed late at work.  After I told him what she had done he came home and she showed off her new skill for dad:) Oh and she finally learned how to roll from her back to her stomach since crawling is her new favorite thing to do.

Now that she can crawl, she gets into everything!

8 Months

     She can say hi-da and dada.  Occasionally we will get a muh-muh-muhm. She also learned how to wave from her cousin Skye.  She could only do it with her right hand initially, but she eventually learned how to do it with her left hand.  They say children don't become right or left handed until around 2 years old.  This girl is definitely right handed! She always learns something first with her right hand, and then the left.

9 Months

    She knows who dada is.  She always gets so excited when she sees Kenny.  It is so cute:) She also learned how to clap and is working on her high five.  She thinks the clapping is so much more fun than waving, so unfortunately she doesn't wave much anymore. We finally got her on a good sleeping schedule! Hallelujah!! We put her down around 7:30pm and sleeps until 5:30am! We feed her a bottle and then she goes back down until 7-7:30am.  She is also finally taking good naps.  She just has to be swaddled in her car seat.  I tried everything to get her to take naps longer then 20-30 minutes in her crib and she wouldn't do it.  So the car seat it is!  She takes two 1.5-2 hour naps.  And since she loves sleeping in the car seat, she sleeps excellent at church.  Kenny can finally listen in Sunday School and part of Priesthood:) She is also finally getting her first tooth.  They really do exist!

Here is Rylee cart surfing at Target.  I was going back and forth between 2 products.  When I turned around I see that Rylee got bored and decided to liven things up a bit. She even managed to get around the buckle. I had a hard time getting her to stay seated the remainder of the shopping trip.  Standing was way too much fun!

Rylee really is growing up so fast!  She just keeps getting more and more fun.  She is a very expressive baby.  She loves to smile and make noises.  We love to make her laugh.  And it is always the weirdest things that make her laugh:) We are so blessed to have her and to be able to watch her grow, learn, and experience new things.  She is one awesome girl!

Kenny has been taking some good video lately.  It is on the computer now.  When he gets a good break from his PhD he will post some videos of her.

That Darn Leaf!

It has been a very long time since I have posted anything. Here are some older pictures of Rylee.  It is crazy to look at these pictures and see all the changes that have happened in just a few months.

Here is Rylee in her bouncer when she is about 5 1/2 months old.  The leaf is by far her favorite! It always goes straight in her mouth:)

Rylee finally started to enjoy tummy time!  Our ward has LOTS of babies and they are all around Rylee's age. During the adult session of Stake conference Rylee was being too noisy, so we took her into the foyer.  There were a few other babies from our ward out there for the same reason.  Rylee saw them all scooting or army crawling on their tummies and finally realized that you can actually move around on your tummy!  She couldn't move forward, but she could move around in circles:) There was hope for her crawling after all!

Apple Fest

We spent a weekend before Halloween at Way Fruit Farms at Apple Fest with the Gibsons. Apple Fest was PACKED with people! I never knew a fruit farm could have so many people at it. In a picture below you can see one guy directing people to park in the huge parking lot. We bought a few pecks of apples, picked out a pumpkin, and got a bag of freshly-made kettle corn. 

After parting ways from the Gibsons, we decided to take a long detour home, over the Pennsylvania mountains. It started to rain as soon as we left the farm, but we were already on our way, so we decided to continue onward anyway. By the time we started up the switchbacks up the mountain, the rain had stopped, and the sun came out. It made for some really good photos. All in all, it was a pretty fun day. 

It was a chilly day, so my girls had to dress up warm. 

We had a hard time deciding which pumpkind to get, but in the end we picked the short and squat one. 

Of course dad had to carry it. 

Pumpkins were like 30 cents per pound. I thought this one weighed about 15 pounds. It actually weighed 22. I'm not such a good guesser. I guess I had a good reference weight of ~13 pounds I should have used. 

This picture was taken as we got to the top of the mountain and headed into the forest. The Pennsylvania landscape is truly beautiful!

Good thing we turned around, otherwise I would have missed this!

Because of the quick rainstorm before the drive, the colors were really vibrant. 

We hit the leaves at the height of their color on this day. 

On our way back we saw a nice double rainbow (all the way across the sky)! The sun was almost down, so the rainbow was almost a perfect semi-circle on the eastern horizon. Notice how the order of the colors for the 2nd rainbow is the opposite of those of the 1st---science is cool!

First Solid Food

When Rylee was a little over five months old, we decided to see how she would do with some rice cereal.  We followed the directions on how to make the "first food" and it was so runny!  I don't think she swallowed any of it.

You can see it all running down her face:)  She would get it in her mouth and then push it all out with her tongue.

And after feeding her (or attempting) for a little while, she decided she was starving and this food wasn't getting her anywhere.  After trying this consistancy a few times we decided to make it thicker and it worked SO much better!  I also decided to try using formula instead of breast milk but that was a no go.  She would cringe and even twitch when we gave it to her.  She is a picky girl:)

Family Pictures

It is rare that we actually get pictures with all three of us in it.  Thankfully our friends were able to take some pictures of us together.  Jeff and Melanie found a nice bridge near the golf course and thought is would be great if we took turns taking family pictures of each other.

This is one of Rylee's favorite things to do--stand on dad's hand.  She sticks her arms out and is so proud of herself for balancing.  She also loves to put on a show for others.  And Kenny loves to scare all the older ladies in the ward with this trick.  The more people freak out, the bigger her smile gets:)

Rylee at 4 months

Rylee still loves bath time.  Sometimes she splashes like crazy and other times she just quietly talks.

Rylee's lovely pajamas:)  You can't see the ears on top of the hat...You will just have to use your imagination.

Rylee is also learning to sit.  And she loves the Bumbo!  It has been a lifesaver.  We can set her on the table while we eat and she feels like she is a part of mealtime.  Of course we have to give her something she can put in her mouth also.  (And her toys won't do.)  At breakfast she loves the cereal bags!  Here she is eating Cheerios.

 Don't worry the stove isn't on:)

 If it was, she wouldn't be this happy!  And don't you love the headband with its matching socks!  Thank you mom!

The Woombie

When Rylee was a newborn she didn't like to be swaddled.  Sounds crazy right!  She would just keep fighting it.  And she couldn't sleep very well without being swaddled because she kept startling herself.    It was a difficult situation...  

We had a friend let us borrow a Woombie to see if that would help.  She hated it initially but after a few weeks we tried it again and she stopped fighting it and fell in love with it.  Now she can't have a descent nap without it.  Weaning her from it might be a pain but I will cross that bridge when it comes:)  

She looks so funny in it :)

She is so happy!

My favorite part is watching her stretch once you take her out of it;)

Thank you Sami for introducing us to the Woombie!