Elite Eight

I thought the title of this post was appropriate since March Madness is starting this week.

The below three pictures were taken on the 11th.

Little Miss Palmer turned eight months old on Sunday. Each month goes faster than the last. I feel like she grew up and changed a lot in the last month. She is so much fun! She makes me smile and laugh all day long. She has started jabbering a lot more lately and she tells the cutest stories ever. She likes to try out different sounds that she can make and loves to squeal and sometimes it even sounds like she's trying to sing. She seems a little shy though and is much more talkative around Mommy and Daddy than when others are around. She'll smile and giggle at any dumb little thing I say or do all day long, but she is quite stingy with smiles around other people. We honestly become more infatuated with her every day; obviously we knew we would just keep loving her more and more, but it's more than that. We literally can not get enough of her. I know I'm biased but everything she does is the cutest in the universe to me.

We go on walks with friends every week. The picture above is Palmer and her good buddy Bryir. Little does Palmer know that I've already got her whole social circle picked out :)

I was certain she'd have a tooth or three by this post because she was definitely working on cutting some teeth a couple of weeks ago. I could feel three little buds, and it was obvious that her mouth was tender. She was fussy and drooly for a couple of weeks. I can still feel the little buds, but she doesn't seem bothered by it any more and the teething process seems to be on hold for now.
In my last post I talked about her pesky little cough. It got a little worse after that post and then it got a lot worse all of the sudden. She was coughing constantly and neither of us was really getting any sleep. Her poor little nose ran non-stop. She had a very slight fever off and on for a couple of days. After a few days/nights of no sleep I took her to the doctor to make sure her lungs sounded ok and that she didn't have an ear infection or anything else that would need attention. I've mentioned before that we absolutely love our doctor, but the bad thing about having an awesome doctor is that everyone else wants to go to him too. So there's just no way to get in to see him unless you make an appointment far in advance. Palmer has had to see a different doctor for her last couple of sick visits; luckily we like this doctor too and she is very kind and seems to know what she's doing. She said that Palmer seemed healthy other than the cough and prescribed a home breathing treatment to try to help her get over the cough and be able to get some sleep. That night was still rough, but by the next night we started seeing some serious improvement. Three or four nights later she was doing SO much better! Ever since then she has been sleeping so great. She seems to love her crib now. When I lay her down for a nap or at bedtime, she happily grabs her lovie named Violet, rolls to her side and goes to sleep without a peep. On the rare occasion that she doesn't go right to sleep she lays there and plays with Violet for up to 45 minutes, talking to it and squealing happily. Then when she decides she's ready, she rolls to her side and goes to sleep. When she wakes up, both in the morning and after naps, she immediately starts talking to Violet and just squeals and plays until I go in to get her. She's now sleeping just over 12 hours most nights - hallelujah! Most days she takes three naps, but if she sleeps long enough in the morning and/or takes two long naps then she gets by just fine with only two naps.

She was such a trooper with her breathing treatments!

How sad is her little runny nose and red eyes?

My beautiful blue-eyed girl is such a pleasant little thing. Even if she gets upset about something she'll let out a little disappointed whine and then she's usually fine. She loves attention. She loves to be sung to. I sing silly made up songs to her all day long and sometimes she "sings" along with me. We sing songs before naptime and bedtime and she usually gets the biggest smile on her face as soon as I start singing.

She has pulled herself up to a standing position on the side of the couch a couple of times with a little help, but she honestly doesn't seem too interested in it. Sometimes I'll stand her up next to the couch or something else she can hold onto and she'll stand there for a minute looking at me like, "now what?" and then she'll drop to her bum and get back to her business. She still isn't crawling. She pushes herself backwards and turns herself in whatever direction she wants, but hasn't quite figured out the forward thing.
She still loves her solids and baby snacks and is such a great eater. She gets very excited when the spoon is coming towards her mouth and she starts flailing her arms and squealing. She ends up hitting the spoon and splattering food all over herself and me quite often. Then she laughs like it's the funniest thing ever.
She loves to shake her head "no." I don't know what she thinks she's saying/doing when she shakes it, but it looks like she's honestly disagreeing with everything that is said to her. It's pretty darn cute, but probably won't be quite so cute when she gets older and pulls real attitude with us.

Last month Noelle hosted her third annual Lyman girls weekend. Palmer was happy to be a part of her first, and certainly not last, girls weekend. We did lots of girly things like sewing, painting nails, eating good food, crafting etc. Noelle is awesome; her house was a straight up circus, but it was so much fun!

One of these days I need to do a blog post about the progress of our house. I also want to do a post about our first two years of living in Blanding. Hopefully soon I'll get on that.