Another benchmark we hit was Sadie’s first time in the ocean. She loved playing in the sand and swimming in the ocean. The sand got EVERYWHERE. When we cleaned her off after the beach it was like she took a gigantic poop made of sand, her diaper was full of it and it stuck to her like a poop she squashed by repeatedly sitting on it. The ocean was pretty cold but she enjoyed floating around on her tube and would constantly lick her lips because of the salt water. The beach that we went to the majority of the time was perfect for toddlers and little kids. The tide would go out about 200+ feet and would leave behind and number of little wadding pools that warmed up nicely in the sun. These pools were ideal for crawling around in, building sand castles, or just chilling and people watching, they were also great to learn how to skim board on, which I tried and concurred with uncle Mikey. his girlfriend and Sadie’s cousin. My wife tried it once and it almost put her out of commission, thankfully it didn’t, she just walked funny for a few days.

Alrighty well, my girl is now seven months old and she is becoming more rambunctious each day. She loves to play on the floor with her toys (especially battery operated ones with awesome music) and roll until a wall or myself or my wife stops her. She has almost taken the place of the dust buster because of all the dust and hair she collects on her clothes from the floor when rolling; we do clean often (Mom, just to let you know) but her big brother has a problem with his hair, he can’t keep it to himself.
She‘s getting ready to crawl and will prop herself up on her hands and knees and rock feverishly back and forth; at times she’ll pant heavily with excitement while rocking, it’s quite a sight. She’ll jump around like madwoman in her jumperoo while screaming and laughing, she’ll get ALL riled up when I jump along side her, the first time she started going berserk her big brother was frightened, I guess he didn’t know what got in to her. She talks and laughs often, especially when she wakes up, at times my wife and I will race each other to get to her first.
She started eating baby food recently and has been enjoying it most of the time; she’ll eat once a day but is still eating breast milk. The only negative about the whole food upgrade is the impact it has on her output, there’s MUCH more to clean, the sent is much more pungent and her flatulence can and has cleared a room, almost worse then Uncle Ev. She did take an aqua dump last week!!! Unfortunately I wasn’t home to witness that magical event but my wife told me it was more then an experience. She still takes baths in her little tub, inside the bathtub so the mess was somewhat contained but still very difficult to clean while supervising a squirming poop cover girl.
She went to her friends 1st birthday party recently and enjoyed herself so much that she pooped through her diaper and clothes (a.k.a. an explosion) and it went half way up her back. Her explosions have become such a frequent event that we can’t take her out of the house with out and extra set of clothes.

Up until recently our routine was to bring her into her room with her last bottle, feed it to her and rock her to sleep then put her to bed asleep.  Our first crack at self-soothing was a little too much for my wife to take, granted listening to your baby cry is difficult but listening to it for over a half hour knowing you could stop it proved to be too much for her so she rocked her to sleep.

The next night my wife went out with her friends so it was up to me to put the baby down and I was determined to have her fall asleep on her own. When the stroke of bedtime fell upon our joyous night of rolling around on the floor grabbing toys and tasting them, jumping around like a maniac in her jumperoo while I rocked out on Guitar Hero and finally reading stories that had finger puppets built in to the book. (She LOVES them and tried to eat the puppet) I took her to her room, put her in her crib, read her a bedtime story, kissed her goodnight, turned off the lights except for her nightlight and left the room.  As soon as I left, the screaming started.  Doing my best to ignore her screams for attention I pumped the volume up on the TV so I could just hear her.  She cried for 26 minutes straight before I checked on her and found that she had pooped, by this time she was exhausted from crying so much.  As soon as I picked her up to change her diaper she was immediately quiet.  This reassured me that she was only craving attention and/or wanted her diaper changed. I changed her diaper with minimal discussion and put her back in to her bed.  Once I left, the dreaded crying continued and didn’t stop for 15 minutes.  When the crying stopped I went in to check on her and found her dead asleep.

The next night my wife and I put her to bed just like I did the night before.  This time she cried for 15 minutes before we went in to check on her and found that once again she cried a poop out.  She was changed quietly, put back to bed and cried for about 10 minute before she fell soundly asleep.  As we continued this bedtime practice the amount of time that she would cry before falling asleep grew less and less.  Now when we put her to bed her standard behavior is to whine for about 5 minutes and then falls asleep, when she is really tired she won’t whine at all.  We really like the self-soothing practice because it works for nap time and it also works when she spends the night at her Grandparents’ houses which is huge because it makes sleepovers much more desirable to her Grandparents.  I strongly feel that this not only makes bedtime easier but mainly increases my little girls independence.

My wife wanted to dress her as a pepper or some other kind of inanimate object but I strongly refused, I don’t care how hot the pepper is it just isn’t scary.  If we can’t find something for her, I might have to do what my mom used to do to my brother and I when we couldn’t decide upon a costume and get a pillowcase, drawl a Pac Man ghost on it and cut a hole in the top.  At least it’s a ghost…

In honor of my girls first fall, we went to the cider mill to celebrate with her friends Ellie and Lexi.  The weather was unbeatable (almost 80), the lines were atrocious and the bees were EVERYWHERE (which is to be expected).  My girl acted great and was amused by all the people.  I think Lexi had the most fun; she’s 2 ½ and was constantly getting yelled at for running off here or there, which is the norm when there is a hay maze, jungle gyms, caricature stands to put your head in to take pictures and kids everywhere to play with.  Watching Lexi take off all over the place made me realize that I’ll be in that boat soon but fortunately my girl is just starting to move around a little.  She’ll inch her way off her activity mat by kicking her legs feverishly while talking to herself.  It is very funny to watch and crazy to see how fast she is developing.

Oh yeah and she smiles!