Last entry I posted up to when she turned 6 months old, and I'm going to carry on from there. This is really for my own record-keeping here, so I have something to look back on, but if others enjoy it too, so much the better! :) Thanks for the sweet comments on my last two catch-up posts, by the way! And I am feeling much better, thanks! SO relieved about that. I am taking adrenal support formula (basically bovine adrenal gland) every morning, and a herbal tincture 3x a day. Also seem to have issues with anxiety that are converting into physical symptoms a lot, so I am working on some relaxation techniques and diaphragmatic breathing to see if that helps (it is!). Getting there. Still feeling tired, shaky and weak at times, and panic easily, but SO much better than I was! I'm functioning almost completely normally again - not quite, but almost! :)
So, this first photo of Lydia was taken at 6 months and 4 days old, right after the last photos in the last entry. It's significant because she was sitting for the first time on her own (well, she'd done it a couple of other times that day and the day before), and although she keeled over after just a few seconds, she was able to sit bolt upright so long as she was concentrating on a toy! It's also to record her first proper "bunches"! She had sparkly pink hair bands and a strawberry hair clip and everything! :D I was seriously so excited, lol!
Breakfast, aged 6 months and 3 weeks. She was juuuust beginning to become really interested in food, since I let her be a few weeks before, and only wanted dry finger food to gnaw on and then push out, so toast was a hit! ;)
These were taken at 7 months and 1 week old - Lydia and 'Lijah (who turned 2 a few days beforehand) playing together on the rug in the living room. :) She looks bigger than Elijah here, but she really wasn't! He's very petite, for sure (and she isn't, hehe!), but it was purely camera angles, honest! She was getting very comfortable on all-fours, having started rocking for a couple of weeks already, and later in the day after I took these photos, she did a little crawl for the first time! Exciting! :)
A week later, at 7 and a half months, she began kneeling at things and she was officially crawling everywhere! Real proper crawling! She didn't bum shuffle or army crawl at all, just rocked and lunged forwards for a couple of weeks, followed by a "tentative week" of little crawls, and then off she went! I have a video from the 8th of June (the photos above and her first little crawl took place on the 30th of May) but I don't know how to upload videos here any more. Only the phone will take videos, which don't upload to my laptop, and I can only upload laptop stuff to blogger for some reason. :( Anyway, another week later (June 15th, so 7 months and 3 weeks old), this happened after church:
She pulled to stand! This quickly became her new favourite activity to practice as often as possible, and she began cruising EVER SO tentatively with barely perceptible foot movements (!!) over the next couple of weeks. She was so subtle about it that I actually can't say when she started cruising! I would sometimes WATCH her to see if she could do it, and I still couldn't say that she HAD, but she would definitely be a foot or two further along the sofa, lol!
Here she is with 'Lijah in the garden, a few days before turning 8 months old. Aren't they little and sweet?! I had a rare afternoon with just these two treasures, because Arthur and Matthew were at a midsummer fete with Heather and her family, and the three middle boys (!) had been invited to a 4-year-old's birthday party, which Neil took them to and stayed to help. So I took the tiny two in the garden for a snack and some play time. It felt SO quiet, and our tiny garden seemed so big, lol!
A day after the above photo - June 22nd - the day before she turned 8 months old, she started waving and clapping all of a sudden in the afternoon! :) She could respond to us waving or clapping to her by copying us, and initiate it so we would copy her. She loves waving and clapping, and funnily enough she is very delicate with both actions, nothing frantic or flappy at all! ;) She uses small careful movements to wave, turning her wrist this way and that as though she's slowly feeling it out, and clapping is a calm, measured activity. She's SO different from my boys! :)
These next photos are from the same weekend - Lydia discovered once and for all that real proper meals are wonderful! ;) Heather, bless her precious heart, has spent two whole days cooking a variety of really wholesome yummy meals for us, and has stocked our freezer with weeks worth of meals. I love her so much! She's such a wonderful friend. I will SO miss having her nearby when we move, and she is moving too, so it feels even more of a "removal"! Anyway, we just served Lydia all Heather's home-cooked meals, and she LOVED them! I have some standards to live up to now, lol! Here she is discovering the joys of sausage casserole! She ate the end of my plateful, and I even offered her some banana cake for dessert, but she wanted more sausage casserole and peas instead! She had her own portions from this day on! ;)
She has never looked back! :) See, look - spaghetti bolognese (8 months old from here onwards):
Fish Pie! Happy Eater! :) She likes EVERYTHING! What a difference from 6 months old when she clearly wasn't ready for food yet. Babies are ready for solid food in. their. own. time!
A few days after she turned 8 months old, I found my long lost really special camera lens, and started snapping photos of Lydia straight away! :) Here are a few of my favourites:
Eating paper - she's a major paper fiend. And stickers, fluff, bits of crayon, cardboard, etc. Anything she can eat off the floor, she will! :/
Such big blue eyes! :) Love her!
Playing with Duplo, really concentrating on the feel of the Duplo surfaces moving together:
Laughing at Matthew! I love this one. She loves Matthew so much, and he loves her and spends quite a bit of time with her too. They all do, but he's especially tender and affectionate with her.
See how happy?! Matthew was holding her upright under her arms, "walking" her about. :)
Little tiny peeps playing together. I remember Elijah was also 8 months old the first time I had reason to photograph him actually playing alongside Samuel. Seems to be a developmental stage for my littles! :)
I have more, I have more! But I have to go to bed. We're at 8 months now, so another 2 months caught up, and only one left to go, yay! :) See how her hair is just growing and growing! It is now too long in the front, and I have to clip or tie it back so she doesn't rub it in her eyes or get loads of food in it. I don't plan to cut it at ALL, because I adore little girls with long hair the same length all over. I am not a massive fan of The Fringe (bangs) even though it does look sweet on little girls. I love the natural look of the front being long too, and swept to one or both sides. Really excited about hair-related things with my baby girl! :)