aiden + mommy seven months update!

(to give an idea of size, that is the same picture frame shown in my 28 week bumpdate)

seven MONTHS

I'll be doing monthly updates like this for Aiden's first year. Aiden is currently 34 weeks old! Things have been understandably a little busy the last while, so forgive me that I'm not on any kind of blogging schedule for now. (: 

Here's how our seventh month has been!

MOMMY

Body:
My hair is growing back and it's starting to look ridiculous in some places. It looks okay in the front, but behind my ears and at the nape of my neck my baby hairs want to defy gravity and grow UP so my hair looks even wilder and frizzier than normal. I finally found my straightener and I always tell myself that "this time I WILL straighten it to look like a halfway normal human person" but I never do. And so I go along in life continuing to look like a wildly outrageous and somewhat theatrical crazy person.

Exercise/Weight loss:
Total pregnancy weight gain: 36 pounds
Total weight loss: 37 pounds
Weight to lose for pre-baby weight: 0 pounds
Weight to lose for wedding weight (last goal): 6 pounds 

Admittedly, we haven't been eating as well as we should be...like on weekends we'll get take out more than we normally do. I'm still losing weight at least, but I know I could get to my goal faster if I ate healthier so I am going to work harder at that (: And it should help that Aiden loves the snow that we've gotten over the last few days and running around pulling a sled behind me with him on it gets the heart going! And it makes me realize how out of shape I am haha. I'm still keeping busy and active around the house, and we were able to go swimming at the local high school pool! It was great exercise for all three of us. And let me tell you how weird it is walking out of a pool building with wet hair when it's literally freezing outside: it's weird. 

Emotions:
I've always been honest on this blog and I'm not going to start sugar coating things now. Things have been a little tough here and there...some days I cry more than others and some days I feel like I'm going to be alright. I'm trying not to miss out on opportunities to bond and have fun with Aiden due to feeling down at times because the days are going by and he's growing up... Before the snow came it had been raining a lot so I took Aiden with me to get the mail one morning. He had a Winter jacket on, his hood on...and yet it didn't do much because he kept craning his head back to look straight up at the wet sky. He just smiled while we walked the whole way, rain drops falling on his face, his hair sopping wet. I could have cried right there because I could see his heart and soul light up in a way that it hasn't in a while when he's around me... When I think of his middle name and what it means to me that's when I get emotional. I know I need to be stronger for him when I'm down, but I have been so overwhelmed...right now if I can just keep my head above the water I am doing okay. Except in the one instance that I told Jason that I wished it was New Years Day so I could go jump in the frozen lake like the crazy people here do every year on New Years Day, then I would just live among the Hawaiian monk seals that so obviously inhabit the frozen Minnesotan waters. Then I wouldn't need to keep my head above water. I'll just be a loose-seal instead. 

Things have been starting to look up again, we have been spending time outside almost every day and I'm trying to maintain focus on what's important and not let the other stuff weigh me down and overwhelm me. I'm thankful I have Jason to help me through my difficult times and who understands me and what I mean when I say I just want to dangle my feet in freezing water for a while. He gets me in a way no one else does.

AIDEN

Height/Weight:
At seven months, Aiden is 27 1/2 inches long and weighs 17 pounds 13 ounces! This puts him in the 50th percentile for height and the 34th percentile for weight! And his cranial circumference is in the 88th percentile! haha (: 

Refresher course:
+ At six months he was 27 1/4 inches long and 17 pounds 6 ounces
+ At five months he was 27 1/4 inches long and 16 pounds 13 ounces
+ At four months he was 26 inches long and 16 pounds
+ At three months he was 25 1/2 inches long and 14 pounds 10 ounces
+ At his two month check up he was 24 1/4 inches long and 13 pounds 7 ounces
+ At one month he was 22 inches long and 10 pounds 8 ounces
+ At birth he was 20 1/2 inches long and 6 pounds 14 ounces

2 weeks / 7 weeks / 15 weeks / 20 weeks / 24 weeks / 29 weeks / 34 weeks

Hair/Eye color:
Aiden's eyes are blue and sometimes they have a little bit of yellow in the center, like Jason has in his eyes. Aiden's eyes are much darker blue though, they're blue like the sea (: His hair is growing a ton on top and even on the back and sides of his head it's starting to grow a little! His hair almost starts to look light brown in the places where it's getting longer in the back, but it still has a red tint on top! His hair is definitely curly. I have my hair up in a bun most of the time because it's easy and I don't have to worry about Aiden pulling it, so some people may genuinely not know what my hair looks like. Now that Aiden's hair has gotten longer and is sporting some full curls, I've been getting asked more often than normal if my hair is curly. The answer to this question is yes. More like, you-don't-wanna-see-what-this-looks-like-unleashed YES. I am of the ilk of curly-girls whose hair is curly and never, ever, ever looks like Taylor Swift hair before she started straightening it all the time. Seriously, it's not good. Here, let me google that for you: monica friends humidity hair. My husband is reading this in Canada somewhere, laughing, because it couldn't be more true. I identified with Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries more than most 10 year old girls because my dad and Mia's stylist had had many similar confrontations with a mess of curly hair as this. Other honorable mentions: having glasses, thick eyebrows, and buck teeth as a kid (she had a retainer in the movie). Not to mention my Grandma Rita is basically Julie Andrews. ♡
Ahh...Mia Thermopolis. You are my spirit animal.

So I'm glad Aiden has some cute curls but I am also hoping Aiden got at least a little dose of Jason's straight hair so he will have an easier time with his hair than I've had with mine haha. 

Routine:
The recent time change was the first one that Aiden has been through. The first few days it was okay, he basically just did everything an hour earlier than normal (woke up in the morning an hour earlier, napped/ate/went to bed in the evening an hour earlier, etc). I think he's fully adjusted to the time change now but when it did finally affect his schedule it wasn't easy. I later learned that Hawaii does not participate in time change which I made sure to add to my daily subliminal messaging when talking to Jason.

Sleeping:
He wakes up around 7:30am now. He had been waking up at 6:30 and earlier for a little while with the time change and everything so I'm glad he's back to his normal now. He takes a short nap around 9:30-10am for an hour at the most...then he will take an afternoon nap around 2pm and those ones are usually 2 hours long. Sometimes he will take a half hour cat nap in the evenings...but it's becoming more and more rare. He goes to bed for the night around 9:45pm on a good night (his other common bedtime is 11pm) and nurses 2-3 times in the night. During time change he was waking up 6-7 times a night. Again, I will say that Hawaii does not partake in time change. Mmmmmmmhm. Just throwing that out there.

Eating:
He's still not entirely sold on the idea of eating solid food. If he's in the right mood for it, he will eat applesauce and pureed taco soup and he will chew on rice cakes, but that's about all right now. Even though he seems to love applesauce, there are times when he refuses to eat it. We got him a sippy cup and he loves apple juice (no surprise there haha) and he loves water too. He seems to prefer drinking water from my big water bottle and he usually looks like a little bird when he's drinking from it! He also tried some carrots and green beans in a more solid state (steamed instead of pureed) at Jason's parents house and while maybe about half a green bean and two slices of carrots made it into his mouth, he seemed to enjoy playing with his food and squishing it into a fine puree himself. Who needs a food processor when your baby will do all the hard work for you? Haha

Clothing sizes:
I finally switched all of Aiden's clothes over to the bigger size. It dawned on me that trying to squeeze him into smaller clothes, no matter how much I love his little baby outfits, is of no use and just makes it so there's a mess of too-small clothes in his room until I get them packed away. Aiden is in 9 month clothes and some 6-12 month clothes now. There's one sweatshirt onesie type thing he has that's a 6-12 month size and his legs are getting so chunky that the buttons are hard to snap! I don't know if it will actually fit him up until he's a year old haha. I still find it a bit challenging trying to figure out how many layers of clothes he needs to be warm yet comfortable in the cold weather, and it does take more time to get him dressed if we're going out, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it!

Developments:
+ I used to put a sheet of bubble wrap under Aiden's feet while he jumped in his Jolly Jumper because he loves the crinkly noise it makes and he gets so excited when he pops a bubble! But now what he'll do is jump...then stop...then look at the bubble wrap...then pick it up with his feet, pass it on up to his hands...and in his mouth it goes! So no more of that unless I'm sitting there with him so I can stop him from putting the plastic in his mouth. He looks like a cute little monkey when he picks it up with his feet  though haha. Now we will set a toy under him instead and watch him pick it up with his feet and lift it up to his hands. Sometimes the toy is too big that can't quite lift it high enough to get it to his hands and it's so cute watching him reach down to his feet and try! We usually just help him get it at that point if he can't get it himself.
+ He can crawl now! He mostly does an army crawl, pulling himself forward with his arms out ahead of him in a triangle shape. He gets on his hands and knees and rocks back and forth, but once he wants to get going he flops down onto his tummy and resumes his army crawl (: 

+ He's getting better at standing while holding onto objects. We still stay close when we have him standing, but for the most part he's pretty good on his feet and doesn't plop down very often. He's also pulled himself up to a standing position from a sitting or crawling position on furniture a few times. He's getting better at that by the day! (:
+ He copies baby babble -  if I say mamama, he will repeat it. And the same for all the different sounds he can make. He also tries to copy facial expressions and does well at copying other noises like raspberries. He also recently figured out how to flick his lips with his fingers to make those funny "wubububub" sounds. He will do it to himself while we're driving and make himself laugh even though he's alone in the backseat! haha. Even if we say "wub wub wub" he will start making all the lip noises haha
+ We have a metal bucket toy box for Aiden that we can put him in to sit in (he loves it!) and he will grab hold of the sides while sitting, and pull himself up to a stand and go back down to a sit, then stand again! It's the perfect size for him to repeatedly pull himself up and be able to gently go back to sitting all on his own. And it's wide enough at the base that we've never had an issue of it tipping over. It's great exercise for him!

+ If we say "Kitty!" he will look around until he sees one of the cats and he gets a big grin when he sees them! It's the first word that we know he knows the meaning of.
+ He has a toy log truck (what else? haha) and we started making "vroom vroom" noises and raspberries while moving it - now whenever he goes up to it, he makes the raspberry noises by himself and associates the raspberry noise with anything that "goes". He even makes the raspberry noise for sled rides haha! (:
+ He has started drinking from a sippy cup for water and juice and he even got to try out drinking from a regular cup (with some assistance of course) and he likes it!

General Preferences: 
+ He still loves to be snuggled (: Especially now that separation anxiety is starting to kick in, whenever he just wants me to hold him he flops his head into my collar bone (you'd think it would hurt haha) and snuggles up. 
+ Story time and books

+ He loves shadows, reflections in windows and mirrors and trying to understand how a person can be in two places at once (: He will look at someone in a window reflection then back at the person and you can tell he's trying to figure out how it all works. (:
+ Being outside and playing in the grass (especially now that he can crawl!) and going for rides in the swing! (: Of course now that's changed in the past few days since we have several inches of snow now, but earlier in the month he liked playing in the grass (:
+ He likes playing with the wood blocks we made him and is starting to see how fun it is to knock a stack of them over!

+ He likes playing with his logging truck and makes "vroom vroom" noises by making raspberries with his lips! (:
+ He makes noise into cups and other things that distort the sound of his voice to see how different he sounds
+ He loves bath time and splashing, and now he has decided to take up swimming in the bathtub, haha. I will preface this by saying the water is shallow enough and I never leave the side of the tub: He will go from sitting into a crawling position laying on his belly and kick his legs! This kid seriously loves water! He has to be in it, around it, and he still wants more of it haha
+ He loves to make us laugh and smile (:
+ Being tossed in the air, "high octane" play as we call it
+ Peek-a-boo!

+ Getting really hyper and kicking his feet really fast and punching his arms out like he's got somewhere he has to be! 

+ If you hold him so his feet are just barely touching your lap, he will kick his feet, trying to jump up as if he's in his Jolly Jumper

+ He prefers for everything to be in his mouth. Everything! 
+ If you catch him at the right time, he likes rice cakes and apple sauce. Sometimes he eats applesauce faster than I can even give it to him!
+ Playing in the water fountain. The cat water fountain. haha

What we've been up to:
+ Remember how in the last update I said I have commitment issues with BIG THINGS like bathroom projects and paint colors? Well guess what?! The bathroom is....STILL NOT FINISHED! Big surprise. 
Give it seven months, you'll see. Anyway, I had started painting the hallway outside of said bathroom in the last update and I have since finished that project so I'm going to give myself a self-five for that one. 
*self-five*
+ Speaking of finishing projects, I finish-finished painting our staircase which was a project that I started over a year and a half ago and I finish-finished painting some shelves in our closet, another project that I started over a year and a half ago. We moved the bifold doors that were in our laundry room (one of them being The Famous Door That Fell Off Its Hinge and onto me while pregnant) and we hung them in our bedroom and I repainted those doors to match the trim in our room. ...I do a lot of things with paint. ...And I also have a problem with not finishing projects in any kind of timely manner haha
+ We started building a pocket door for our laundry room! This is something I'm really excited about. The way our house is laid out, you walk in the front door and if you look to your left you see a messy kitchen and if you look to the right you'll see Mt. Never-Ending-Laundry-Pile-est. That's because our washer and dryer are just inside our front door and so were the shelves that housed all the laundry baskets. You know, with the dirty laundry in them. That way, whenever anyone stops by they can get a good look at our dirty laundry. Literally. I've been tired of that for a while now and we finally figured out what to do to solve the problem with that space. We built some shelves in the laundry room closet for the laundry baskets and now a wall and pocket door are going up which will hide the washer and dryer and make the laundry room an actual room instead of just walking in the house and getting all up close and personal with my washing machine. We also have some other projects planned for the laundry room that will start coming along once the wall is finished. Some people find joy in going out and partying on the weekends and I just like my laundry madness to be efficient.

+ We got our first snow recently and it was so bizarre. I mean aside from the leaves being off the trees, everything was still green and then all of a sudden within an afternoon everything was white! It all melted the next day, but I dressed Aiden up in his snowsuit and took him into the shade where there was still some snow so he could play. It was his first time playing in snow! His snow suit makes him so round and rolly polly that he couldn't even sit up in it. He just kept tipping over! haha. But he seemed to like the snow. We then got another dump of snow a couple of days later that again, took everything from green grass to completely blanketed white in a matter of hours. That snow looks like it's here to stay for the Winter. But I'm proud of Minnesota! It went all the way to mid/end of November without hardly snowing or freezing. In other years since I've lived here it was doing that in September and October already. So I'm not complaining about the late onset of Winter this year at all (: 
+ Since it's been snowing, we've been going out almost everyday at least for a little bit to play in the snow, make snowmen, snow angels, go for rides in the sled, nature walks...and Aiden loves it all!
+ Going on evening walks with Jason and Aiden when it's not too cold out (:
+ My flip flops broke! I know that to most this is culturally insignificant, but to me it was as if my sunshiney world was starting to crumble all around me. Wearing flip flops was my way of keeping Summer alive this far into Fall. It's not like any local stores would carry flip flops this time of year anymore. Normally I walk around outside barefoot, but once the ground started freezing I started wearing my flip flops instead. I think it was the day I took the mail out wearing a hoodie and flip flops when there was frost on the ground and in the grass and it was below freezing that I realized I had officially assimilated to Minnesota culture. Because COLD? What's THAT. Now I eat snow for breakfast and say uff-da and stuff. Ok, jk, when's Summer. (But really, I'm not minding Winter that much this year. Winter with a baby to play with it makes the cold so much more acceptable.)
+ We finally made it to a swimming day at the high school pool! Aiden really enjoyed it and I started practicing swimming with him. And yes, he did kick! (This was before he started trying to "swim" in the bathtub so I think swimming in the pool is where he learned it from! haha). It was so precious. He honestly cannot love water any more than he does.
+ I got Aiden his very own bubbie! Now he has his very own security blanket and we made it a special occasion for him. He got to open it and everything! And he loves being wrapped in it (:

+ On the same note as loving water and Aiden and his new ability to crawl, our cats have a water fountain. I know, we are those cat owners. So....Aiden found their water fountain. I don't let him play in it, but there have been a few times where he makes it there before I can get him. And when he does get there before me, he likes to stick his hands under the waterfall, splash in the bowl and get sopping wet. He really. really. loves water. 
+ So naturally he enjoys it when we go on short walks to get the mail in the rain.
+ Now that there's snow, I will take him with me to get the mail. He sits in the sled and I pull him along with the mail sitting in a bag behind him like a little Christmas mail carrier haha (:
+ For fun we did a dress up day and I got a couple outfits together so he could be Chuck Bartowski (from NBC's Chuck) and Charles Carmichael (Chuck's secret agent identity). It was so fun dressing him up! I remembered after doing the pictures that when I was pregnant with Aiden I went on a weird little rant about naming all 50 of our future children some variation of Chuck so it worked out appropriately. Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaales.

+ Aiden possibly ate a few leaves in the process of picture taking.

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And now, an ode to my people.

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As  always, you can check out more of our adventures (with frequent updates)

by following me on instagram - @marlyssa

Happy seven months, Aiden. It feels like it was just a week ago that I was writing your six month update and now here we are, another month has gone by. Is it possible for each month to go by faster than the last? Every "first" we have with you is a joy. I wish I could capture them all! Not too long ago I told your daddy that you should tell us your life story - it wouldn't take you very long - only seven months! It's hard to believe that only half a year ago you were still a tiny little newborn who couldn't even hold his head up and now here you are, standing on your own. Every day is a process of letting you go, little by little...and one day mamama will see you fly. 
Oh Aiden, you mean the world to me.
You will always be my baby bird.
love you more,
mommy