Turner Blogcast Station: 11 Months

It is getting nearly impossible to get a photo of C in that chair!

Stats: We weighed her both on our bathroom scale and the Schlyper bathroom scale, and she came in at 18 lbs at our house, and 18.6 lbs at their house. So she's gained weight and percentiles and is now somewhere between 13th and 16th percentile!

Health: We had the sickness from hell this month. On the last Sunday of June, at 4 in the morning, Callie woke up crying and definitely running a fever. We spent the following 4 days dosing her with Tylenol or Ibuprofen when her fever went above 102, on and off the phone with the RN line when her fever spiked above 104, and when she started convulsing from fever shivers, and when her lips turned blue and her cheeks flushed with veins from who knows what. We went in to the clinic twice since her fever never went down and we had no idea what it might be. The two pediatricians we saw suspected either the Roseola rash or Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease, but she never broke out in a rash, so we never figured out what was wrong. It was a pretty rough 4 days. Needless to say, she didn't sleep well and she gets really clingy when she's sick, so we were up a lot holding her and rocking her, or she was in bed with us laying on top of us to sleep.

Sleep: Callie had a 10.5 month sleep regression where she woke up around 10:30 pm and 3 am for a feeding. She might have been going through a growth spurt, which would explain the extra percentile growth we saw in her weight this month. But that only lasted for about a week. She's normally down between 7 and 8 pm, and up again between 6:30 and 7:30 am. Sometimes if she's up or around 6:30, we can feed her and she'll go back to sleep for awhile, but she's pretty regular.

She also takes two good, long naps a day. She'll go down for about an hour and a half to two hours around 9 am, and again around 1pm. She's cut out the 3rd evening cat nap for the most part, and will stay up, playing, and happy from around 3 until her bedtime at 7.

Clothes/Diaper Size: Calista is still fitting nicely in her 6 month clothes, which is good because I have soooooo many adorable clothes in that size, and I don't feel like I got to use them all enough! She's also fitting into 9 month stuff, but the onesies are a little loose and the pants are a little baggy, so I'm happy to keep those clothes in the 9 month drawer and wait to use them until she's too big for the 6 month stuff.

She's wearing size 3 diapers, and I think she'll be in those for some time since they're rated from 16-28 lbs.

Diet: We've been having so much fun with solid foods lately. Because she chews her foods now, we're able to cut down on the baby foods and the purees, and give her more of the foods from our plates. She loves small chunks of meat - chicken, hamburger, pork, salami, salmon, it doesn't seem to matter. She'll also eat just about any fruit or vegetable we put in front of her. She went through a 5 lb box of strawberries in under a week. This month's experiment was cherries since they're in season and soooooo delicious. They're a bit of a pain to cut up for her, but she loves them. Some food staples for her are bananas, avocados, cheese (lately she prefers the Smoked Gouda and Creamy Havarti from our cheese variety pack), scrambled eggs, and cheerios.

She's also getting bottles of formula throughout the day. We offer her a full bottle before and after every nap, which sometimes she sucks down and sometimes she only takes an ounce or two. I've stopped keeping track of how much she's eating since it was stressing me out too much, and since we're offering her food so often, I feel confident she's taking in what she needs.

Baby Gear Love: We had a little "keeping up with the Schlypers" purchase a few months ago, and bought a high chair/shopping cart cover and it has really come in handy now that Callie is no longer content in her car seat while we go shopping. I love it especially because Callie is at this awkward stage where she's too small to fit comfortably in the shopping carts or high chairs, so this kind of packs her in more securely and she doesn't try to wriggle out of them any more.

We also recently purchased a portable high chair that screws on to any table, and we've gotten a ton of use out of it since we bought it. It was a little spendy at $60 new, but it's weight max is 37 lbs, so I know we'll get a few years use out of it. We bought it after our beach house trip last month and not having a high chair for her, and we've already gotten a lot of use out of it. We used it at the Yacht club in Klamath, at friend's houses when we visit for dinner, and at the picnic tables while camping.

Other items I STILL use on a daily basis are our BOB stroller, the swing, the Ergo carrier, the pack n play, and the command center and walker.

Nicknames: Babers, Boo Boo, and Baby have caught on with Bryann and my parents. Others that make their appearance include Callie Bug, Callie Belle, and Callie 'Laine

Favorite Songs/Lullabies: Callie likes just about anything I sing to her, and I make up all sorts of songs all day long. Mostly I just sing about what we're doing to the tune of whatever song I have stuck in my head at that moment. Sometimes I think she sings back.

Milestones/Firsts: This month, Callie learned to clap her hands, to wave hello and bye bye, and to show us how big she is. She can stand up without pulling herself up on anything, and she can stand by herself without holding on to anything. She's gotten much better at walking, though she's still not super interested in walking as a way of travel, and much prefers to crawl. She's become much more vocal than she used to be, and is including "doh-doh" in her babbling repertoire.

This month she celebrated her first Independence Day (though she was sound asleep in the 5th wheel at my parents house during the fireworks), and went to one of her best friend's 1st birthday party, during which she played in a pool for the first time!

We also took her to her first baseball game in Hillsborro. We met Tamara, Rian, and Hannah out there for a 7pm game because we wanted to practice and get a sense for how she would handle staying up waaaaaay past her bedtime when we went to the Braves games in Seattle in early August, and more Braves games in Atlanta at the end of August. We had a great time with the Schlypers, fed her some dinner at the park, and she was fairly content playing in our laps until she got tired, and then she did well in the Ergo, but didn't fall asleep while we were at the park. It was a nice first run since we could go straight home if things went poorly (unlike in Seattle or Atlanta!)

At the Hillsboro Hops game to practice for the Braves games later this summer

At the end of her 11th month, we took her on her first camping trip! There was no cell service, so of course I turned off my phone and got zero pictures of the weekend, but Callie did SO great! She napped like a champ in the Ergo, she slept in her crib at night in our tent (but only when it got dark. We tried to put her to bed at 8 when it was still light out, and it did NOT go well!) I put her on a blanket to play a few times, but she just crawled off and started putting rocks, and dirt, and bark chips in her mouth, so she spent most of the time either in someone's lap, in the Ergo, or in her portable high chair. She ate mostly solid foods the entire weekend, since she prefers a warm bottle and wouldn't drink any of the cold formula milk. We would heat the water up during group meal times for her, but if the bottle wasn't warm, she wasn't having it. We also spent the day at the lake with Katee and Isaac, and Auntie Elizabeth, and she got to play in a lake for the first time. This girl LOVES water!! When we got home, we let her play in our shower while we showered the camping trip off of us all, and she had a blast crawling around in there, too.

Likes: Climbing over obstacles, "wrestling" in bed aka being pushed over by mommy and daddy whenever she tries to get up and crawl away, chewing on stuff, going for walks, being outside, bath time, water play time.

Dislikes: The end of bath time, the end of play time, having things she's chewing on taken away from her, being told "No, you can't play with that," being put down when she's having the greatest time ever squirming around in my arms, diaper changes with out Mr. Frog to entertain her.

Things I Don't Want to Forget:
All of her funny faces. Her different smiles, her squinchy face, her laughing face, her concentrating face, her curious face, her furrowed eyebrows and pursed lips, even her sad face. She's got SO much personality and I love all of her faces.