Lauren Updates

Lauren will be 8 months old this weekend! New developments:

The only object that makes Lauren cry if you take it away from her is....her toothbrush! She loves to brush her teeth. We introduced a toothbrush about six weeks ago and help her brush her teeth every night before bath time. Now she likes to hold the toothbrush in her mouth herself, although she will let us help her move it around. When it comes time to put the toothbrush down, she gets very upset. It is so funny! We will remind her of this when she is older and doesn't like to brush her teeth!

Lauren is sitting up a lot more now. We had to lower her crib to the lowest setting because we often find her sitting in the crib and she is now starting to try to pull herself up sometimes.

She has started a weekly play date with Lydia's son John. John and his nanny Sabrina have been coming over once a week to play with Lauren and Barbara downstairs in our building's play room. It is so nice to have the play room as an extra place to go when it seems like she is ready for something different.

Lauren does not like to nap on the days when we are home with her. When Barbara is here, Lauren naps great and stays on her schedule. On the days when I am home with her, and on the weekends, Lauren will not nap on her regular schedule. I know we are doing all the same things that Barbara does because I've watched Barbara. I think Lauren just gets so excited to spend time with us. It can be challenging because she has a happier day when she naps!

Lauren sees our "toys" and wants one for herself. Dan, Barbara and I all have our cell phones with us all the time. I know Lauren notices this and one of her favorite toys is her little plastic phone that came with her activity center. She brings it with her around the house, just like all of us! She also seemed fascinated with my credit cards, so I gave her a Toys R Us rewards card that I never use and that is her own little "credit card." She is pretty attached to it.

Photos below were taken by Barbara today and last Thursday.

Lauren is scooting, sitting and almost crawling!

It is hard to believe that Lauren is already 7.5 months old. In the past two weeks, she has developed several new, exciting skills! She is pretty mobile now. She is so close to crawling, but it's more of a scoot at the moment. Still, she can make her way across the room. She also figured out how to go from being on her tummy to sitting up. She has good balance. We usually try to spot her just in case, but she rarely falls over. She loves being on her tummy and is constantly trying to roll over if we place her on her back. It makes changing her diaper very challenging. At this point, I've figured out how to get her dressed while she stays on her tummy.

Another new development is that Lauren clearly has developed a strong trust in those individuals she recognizes and she is wary of strangers. I think she has developed separation anxiety, which is supposed to happen around 9 months, but I think it's here early. Around Dan, Barbara, Annamaria and me, Lauren is happy as a clam. She also clearly recognizes Oma and Poppa and is fine with them holding and playing with her. But if she is left with anyone unfamiliar, or if someone she doesn't know holds her, she gets a really scared, sad look on her face and bursts into tears a few seconds later. Last Friday I had a conference call I had to take, so I hired a new sitter to watch Lauren for a couple hours at our home. I had the sitter arrive an hour before my call started so we could all spend time together and let Lauren know this woman was okay. As soon as I left the room to prepare for my call, Lauren burst into hysterics and screamed for over an hour. It was so awful and I felt terrible - for Lauren, for the sitter, and me! I tried to finish that call as fast as possible and I paid the sitter double since she was so patient and kind to Lauren while she screamed her head off for such a long time!

We have also discovered that Lauren is sensitive. She is a sympathy crier. A few times in the past month, we have been someplace where another child started crying. Lauren will look around to see who is upset and then she will start crying too. It's not a terrible "I'm-so-upset" cry, it's more of a half-cry if that makes sense. She usually gets over it really fast because we tell her everything is fine, and obviously she is fine and there is nothing to cry about so she stops. But it is funny to watch her react to other kids.

Last week, Lauren started weekly play dates with Lydia's son John. John and his nanny Sabrina have been coming over once a week to play with Lauren and Barbara in our downstairs playroom. I'm glad the babies and nannies are able to socialize. Lauren really loves being around other babies, so I think this is really good for her. We have also been going to a weekly music class, Wiggleworms, that I think she enjoys. There are about 10 babies and parents in the class and Lauren usually has a very serious face the entire time, so it's hard to know what she thinks about it, but we'll keep going through the end of the year since I think it's fun and good experience.

Below are a few photos taken in the past two weeks. You can see Lauren's newest toy is my old laptop (the hard drive completely died, so she just sees a blue screen when it's turned on, but it's her very own computer!).

Lauren is 7 months old!

Lauren turned 7 months old last week. She is growing up so fast! She has become much more social in the past few weeks. She is more interested in other babies and faster to smile and engage with non-family members. She is very close to being able to crawl (see the 2nd photo below!). Two weeks ago we started a music class called Wiggleworms at the Old Town School of Folk Music. It is quite fun. There are 10 babies between 6-12 months of age. It is fun to see them interact with one another. Also two weeks ago we bought Lauren a jumperoo, which she absolutely loves! We let her play in the jumperoo for a total of about 30 minutes a day (about 10 minutes during each after-nap play time). She gets the biggest smile on her face and hops up and down until she wears herself out. Lauren is also eating a wider variety of solid foods (still purees). She loves fruit and doesn't care so much for veggies unless they are mixed with fruit. She must have the Henderson sweet tooth!

Below are some new photos from the past week or so.

New photos!

Here are a few recent photos of Lauren. I have a backlog of stuff to post - I'll try to do better this month!

Lauren and I started a music class last week, which she seems to really enjoy. We also bought her a jumperoo last week, which she loves because it allows her to stand up on her own!  She is also much more mobile now. In the bottom photo you can see she scooted herself under her crib. She has not mastered crawling forwards yet, but she is able to scoot backwards pretty well.