New things

In just a few short days, Jazlyn will be 11 months old. It is so amazing how fast time flies. She is just a month shy of being 1 YEAR OLD! My baby is growing up and is changing very quickly. Since my last post, Jazlyn is now crawling EVERYWHERE. She follows us everywhere we go. She is also getting into a lot more. Anything that is in her reach, she gets into it. Who needs toys when you have books, remotes, papers...to get into and play with? She also pulls herself up and gets a little too confident at times. She thinks she can let go and she will remain standing. She's like 'look at me' and then she goes down. Her falls aren't always so pleasant. She has shed a few tears. Although she stands up at the coffee table, she hasn't yet taken any steps to start walking around it. If she wants to get something at the other end she gets down and crawls and pulls herself back up. It won't be long...

Alex and I saw an advertisement on TV for My Baby Can Read. After several discussions, we finally decided to purchase it. Well so far, we have seen good results. It comes with different levels of DVDs, flash cards and books. Right now at the first level she watches a video one to two times a day and is learning such words as arms up, arms down, wave, clap, nose, mouth, eyes, toes, baby, tiger, elephant, gorilla. She doesn't speak these words yet by any means, but if you say arms up, she raises her arms up. If you say clap she claps. If you ask her where her nose is, she kind of points to her nose, but most of the time it's her mouth. She does kind of say baby, but it's a whisper. She is supposed to watch this DVD for a month. It's about a 30 minute video and she usually loses interest after about 15 minutes, but it just repeats the words over and over anyways. They just put it in different colors, fonts, use pictures, etc. just to reiterate the words. We will see.

Jazlyn has also learned Patty Cake. She claps and then she rolls her little hands. It is too cute. She usually wants to jump to the roll 'em up before we actually get to that part. Jazlyn enjoyed her first Easter. She found a pink egg in the front yard and picked it up and then took it straight to her mouth. She looked so cute in her little Easter dress thanks to Alex's cousins from New York who sent it to us when she was born. Thank goodness it was a bigger size and she could wear it.

9 months old...plus

As I am writing Jazlyn is now 9 1/2 months old. At her 9 month checkup she weighed in at 16 lbs 5 oz and measured at 27 in. She is moving up the charts a little bit. At her 6 month checkup her weight was at the 'less than 5%' mark and her height was at the 10-25%. She is now at 10% for weight and 25% for height. WooHoo!! She is definitely eating a lot more.

Jazlyn has picked up on several different things. If you ask her for a high five she puts her hand straight out and touches your hand. If you say 'yea' to her she starts clapping her hands. She's starting to also clap her hands if you say patty cake to her. The doctor was quite amazed by these milestones as he said these usually happen around the 1 yr mark. Just this week she picked up a new thing. If you ask her 'how big is Jazlyn' she raises both arms straight in the air. We respond with 'soooo big' and she just grins from ear to ear. It is so cute. Mama Zehr taught her that. Now we are teaching her how to blow a kiss.

Jazlyn is starting to crawl around. She crawls a little bit and then falls down and goes back to rolling everywhere. It won't be long and she will be crawling all over the place. She just has to get her confidence level up. She is starting to pull herself up on her knees so needless to say we had to make some adjustments around the house. We lowered the mattress in her crib. We also have to watch what is on the coffee table because she likes to get into that stuff now. She is defintely getting into a lot more things. She doesn't quite understand what no means yet though.

9 month pictures...she did so well.








After her 9 month pictures we took her to get her ears pierced. She has no idea what is about to happen.


Ear # 1

Ear # 2...not a happy camper...Mommy felt horrible and Daddy couldn't be in sight.


After it was all done....look at those tears. She was completely fine after a half hour. Laughing and carrying on as her normal self.


Her favorite sleeping position


Daddy gave her a bath and made her have crazy hair



Although the Colts lost the Super Bowl, we still had a good time in our Colts gear and hanging out at Mama and Papa Watts' house with Mama and Papa Zehr as well.


The look....


She knows we get a kick out of that look and just cheeses it up afterwards.


She's starting early....uh oh

8 months old!!

Jazlyn will be 8 months old tomorrow. My how time flies. She is my pride and joy!! Although I don't take her to the doctor until next month for her 9 month check-up, I predict she weighs about 15 lbs. Now that she is eating cereal and baby food, she is chunking up a little bit. She's got the chubby cheeks and the double chin. Her little legs are not so little any more either. I think we finally have her on a good schedule. She has cereal and milk for breakfast and lunch with a bottle in between and then after an afternoon bottle she eats a whole jar of baby food for supper and then drinks another bottle just before bed. This week she has been getting really tired around 8:00. Believe it or not, we have put her to bed by 8:30 every night. I am kind of liking this. It gives me a little time to do what I want to do before I go to bed. She still sleeps through the night. Every now and then we will hear her fuss a little bit, but she manages to fall back to sleep. The last few mornings she has been laying the opposite direction of how I laid her down the night before. She's a little squirmer at night, but I would never guess that on the monitor. The monitor is a savior for me. I have had some pretty sleepless nights just worrying about her, but when I hear her on the monitor I feel relieved. Not sure why I worry so much, but I do. I lose a lot of sleep. :( I always feel so bad waking her up in the morning. She is so sound asleep. I pick her up and she just lays her head on my shoulder for a little bit and doesn't want to open her eyes. Once she wakes up she is in a really good mood. I get her dressed and feed her the cereal and a bottle before I take her to either Alex's mom or my mom. I still need that bonding time with her in the morning. I enjoyed every minute of it when I was nursing her and I didn't want that to change when I quit. Things are too chaotic in the evenings, so I don't get that one on one with her as much. She's still not crawling. She rolls around a lot and scoots, but can't quite get her knees up. We'll keep working. As she continues to say 'da da', we are practicing very hard to get the 'ma ma' down. She's got the 'b' and 'g' sounds down and loves to smack her lips, but that is all the closer we are to 'ma ma'. She has been entertaining us with some pretty funny faces. It's a sight to see. Alex's mom told me this week, that when I pull up at her house, she'll tell Jazlyn that 'mommy's here' and Jazlyn immediately looks toward the door and then looks at his mom and smiles. It makes my day every evening when I pick her up just how excited she is to see me. She kicks and coos like crazy and reaches her arms out for me. I love it!! Well that's all for now.

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year everyone!! Well Jazlyn's New Year's didn't start off so great. She woke up New Year's Eve rather sick. She has a serious cold...snotty nose. She was running a fever on New Year's Eve, but that is gone. She just has all of the drainage going on now. Poor thing is miserable while trying to drink a bottle and sleeping. She can't breathe. Needless to say the last several nights have been very late nights for us. I hope she gets to feeling better and back on the correct sleeping schedule by the time we go back to work on Monday.

She did wake up New Year's Eve saying a new thing...her first word of 'dada'. It took me a little while to figure out if that is what she was truly saying. After saying it over and over all day long I was finally convinced that her first word was not 'mama'. Alex got a big smile on his face when he first heard her say it. Thanks to Mamaw Zehr for practicing 'dada' with her everyday. :( She says it pretty consistently now. Now we have to start practicing 'mama'.

Jazlyn's first Christmas was a success. She got to meet Santa at my work's Christmas party. That went over better than I thought it would. Alex put her on his lap with her back facing him so she wouldn't see his face and freak out. Once she realized that mommy and daddy were standing in front of her, she was curious who was holding her. She turned her head to find Santa. She didn't get scared at all. She just started grabbing his beard. It was cute. Her first present she opened she actually started tearing the paper and then once she had enough torn off it went straight to her mouth. Forget the present. Once we took the paper away she did enjoy playing with her new toy. She got to see lots of family over the course of the last 2 weeks. She's spoiled rotten. Thanks to everyone for all of the great gifts for her. She is enjoying all of her wonderful toys and will look great in her new outfits.

Some other updates...Jazlyn is rolling around like crazy. She has not begun to crawl yet, but scoots around. She has sat up on her own on a few occasions. Her balance is getting better. I would say it won't be long. We think she is definitely starting her teething phase. We are unable to feel anything poking through, but she is drooling like crazy and gnawing on everything she can get her hands on. She loves the cold teething rings that St. Nick brought her.

After 7 months of sleeping in the pack-n-play bassinet in our bedroom, we have finally moved her to the crib in her nursery. The first night was good for Jazlyn, but not so good for mom. She slept through the night, but mommy laid awake all night listening for every little sound on the monitor hoping she was okay. The second night she went to bed okay but then woke up about 12:30 screaming. We discovered she doesn't like the mobile that we had over her crib. Once we took that down she seemed to be okay. This holiday break has really messed up her sleeping schedule. The other night we could not get her to go to bed for anything. We had to do the whole let her cry herself to sleep scenario. That was extremely difficult for the parents. She cried for a half an hour and finally went to sleep. We might have to do it a few more times yet until she gets used to it but not until she feels better. It's been some pretty late nights over the past week.

Well after 7 1/2 months of nursing, I have called it quits. It was bittersweet, but yet I needed to stop as I just wasn't producing much anymore. I am just very pleased that I was able to make it as long as I did. My how fast we go through formula now. Jazlyn has also been eating some cereal, but we just recently started her on baby food. The first night we tried carrots, but she did not like that at all. The next night we tried squash and it didn't go as well either until we mixed it with rice cereal. It's amazing how that makes a difference. We went 4 nights of squash and now we are on green beans...still mixing with cereal. Hopefully when we go back to carrots she will like them if they are mixed with cereal. We will get through the vegetables and then we will go to the fruits.

One last thing...at Jazlyn's 6 month checkup, she weighed 11 lbs 12 oz and measured at 24 3/4 inches long. She is definitely putting some weight on with the cereal and baby food. She's got the chipmunk cheeks going on. But she's still so cute.

6 months old

Jazlyn turned 6 months old on November 15th. My how time flies. We took her to get her 6 month pictures taken a couple weekends ago. Thought I would share a few with you. Enjoy!!

Jazlyn's First Halloween

We didn't really take Jazlyn trick or treating per se, but we did go visit family just to show her off a little bit. Enjoy the pictures.

Weight update at 5 months

I took Jazlyn to the doctor today for a weight check. Since she had only gained one pound from her 2 month check-up to her 4 month check-up, her doctor wanted me to add another feeding during the day and come back a month later and get her weight checked. The combination of the extra feeding and the improvement of my milk supply, thanks to a presription the doctor gave me, helped to improve her weight...I could definitely tell she had gained. I was quite surprised yet very pleased to find out she now weighs 10 lbs 4 oz. I wasn't expecting that much. She continues to be a very healthy baby. She's fighting a little congestion now but with the help of mucinex it's getting better. She's 5 months old and changing like crazy. She is so good and so easy to take care of. I can't complain so far.