We just can't believe it's already been 6 months! We are so blessed to have such a happy, sweet, healthy, beautiful girl. We're so proud of her! It always seems to me like right when she hits a new "birthday" in the month, she starts to seem older and bigger to me, and it was the same this month. I'll save my official birthday update and picture post for later on, after she wakes up and takes some pictures for me though....
I haven't written in a while... it's going to be hard for me to remember everything I should mention to catch myself up!
Kemble had her first St Patrick's day and wore the cute little shamrock dress I bought last summer for $2! When I find stuff like that, I wish I could just make it grow with her so she can wear it from year to year, because next year, I'll want her to have another cute outfit and who knows if I'll find one. Especially for $2!
Stephen and I always enjoy filling out a bracket for March Madness. I really don't mind watching sports as long as there's something at stake... my team winning, a huge upset, or winning a bet with Stephen. So when March rolls around, we always set up our brackets independently and then see who wins! We enjoy watching the games that we disagreed on, it makes it so much more fun. This year, we enjoyed rooting for the Aggies in the first two rounds, and Kemble did too:
My mom came to visit during Spring Break for a couple of days, and we really enjoyed having her here! We didn't do much of anything besides playing with Kemble and talking, except I did do her hair. It's nice to do some hair every now and then, I still enjoy it, in fact, I enjoy it more now that I can do it so sparingly! She spoils all three of us every time she's here, and we always have a really good time! Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of her visit. I get so frustrated with myself sometimes for not taking pictures when I want to. I really don't want to spend my life, or watch Kemble grow up, from behind a camera - however, I hate when something passes and I realize I didn't take any pictures of it!!
We also went down to Waxahachie one day to celebrate birthdays. Mamie's birthday celebration got cancelled when Emily and Callianne both got violently sick with the flu and strep throat. Thank goodness, they got better quickly, but we hadn't ever found a time to reschedule her party, so we did it over spring break, and we had a great time. We just hung out at Jill's house, had yummy lunch and cake and visited and played. Callianne was quite the entertainment for Kemble, I wish I could've brought her home with us! After that, we went to Joe's Crabshack for Dustin's birthday party. Unfortunately, Kemble was kind of the party pooper. She can't stand the loud restaurants, this is the 3rd time this has happened, but she just screamed and cried the entire time from the moment we got there. We tried to stay as long as we could, but she was getting so upset, we finally had to leave. We were glad we got to see everybody, even if it wasn't for very long.
Let's see.... we've still been walking every day that it's pretty outside, and we've really been enjoying that. We're so ready for spring weather to get here and stay!! Stephen's been working to get the yard in order for spring, and our bradford pear trees and hyacinth have started blooming, which I always love. We got another March snow last week - about 3 or 4 inches I think, but it's always crazy for it to snow after spring blossoms are already blooming!
Yesterday, Melissa came to get her hair cut and we went to lunch at The Chestnut Tree and we had a good time catching up. We don't get many visitors, so when we do it's always nice. Kemble cracked us up at lunch because when we were eating, I was also giving her a bottle, and when we looked down she'd kicked off her socks, which were lying on the ground under the table, and she had propped her feet up on the table! She had her little toes curled around the top to hold them up there. When I bent down to get the camera, it moved her feet, but sure enough, she put them right back up there!! Later, when we were all sitting on the couch, I was telling Stephen about it, and we laughed because he said "I wonder where she could get that from" - we both had our feet propped up on the coffee table in front of us! Stephen has always made fun of me for using my toes to pick stuff up or whatever, but I'm pretty sure we have another monkey toes in the family now. She's always using her feet to help herself bring a toy up to her hands. Silly girl!
We have always felt lucky that Kemble has always been such a good sleeper. She started sleeping through the night at only a couple months old, and has always napped in her crib well, and we've just never had to deal with any of the sleep problems that it seems many struggle with. However, for the past several weeks, although it seems like months, I really don't know when this started or when it got so much worse, she has been having trouble falling or staying asleep. Sometimes, she dozes right off immediately... other times, she just fights and fights. She loves to snuggle with something, but she will knock her paci out over and over again trying to chew on her bunny or bear or whatever she's got, and if I don't give her anything, she will take it out to chew on her fingers. I've assumed all along that it's teething, because she seems to be so aggressively chewing on everything she can. You can tell she's tired, and the longer this goes on, the more tired she gets, and it becomes a vicious cycle. We will go in there a zillion times to "shh" her and put her paci back in and calm her down, but then it all starts again until she finally nods off.
Then, sometimes she stays asleep (and lately this has gotten better), but sometimes, she will only sleep for 30 minutes, especially at naptime, then she's awake fussing and fighting again, and I usually can't ever get her back to sleep after that. Then, again, she's cranky and overtired and then it all cycles again later at her next nap. I can tell the difference between when she wakes up satisfied or not satisfied with the sleep she got, because when she's had enough sleep, she wakes up quietly and happy, and often I will look at the monitor to see her wide awake and playing in her crib, without ever making a peep, or hear her just talking to herself.
During the night, we can usually get her to bed pretty easily because we wear her out playing until her last bottle, but then she's started waking up during the night. The night before last it happened at least 10 times between midnight and 7 am - which made getting any solid sleep pretty hard for me too! She doesn't seem hungry at all, or even in real pain, she doesn't cry or scream, she just starts to stir and whimper, and if I just go put her paci in for her, she immediately is sound asleep again. If I don't go in there, it will eventually escalate into a wide awake and crying baby, so it's much easier if I just go in there and give it to her than letting her wake up completely.
I know she's at an age where she is changing and developing, and I've read that around this age babies start to sleep differently because they are so much more alert and not just sleepyheaded newborns. However, I still think this may be teething, it's like she is just not quite comfortable enough to put herself back to sleep after each sleep cycle. I'm going to try some overnight diapers and see if maybe that's the problem, because she does wake up 100% saturated every morning, and sometimes her PJs are damp from it seeping through the diaper. Also, Jill recently told us about teething tablets (which I'd always seen in the stores, but never paid any attention to), and so we tried some, and WOW!! Most of the time, if she's having a fit trying to get to sleep, I will put one or two under her tongue and she is almost instantly calm and asleep. Occasionally they don't work, but they almost always do. Then she seems to stay asleep better after that too. Last night, she devoured a whole bowl of cereal in no time flat, then when Stephen tried to give her the bottle, she made horrible faces and refused over and over again. She wouldn't take her paci either, so I assumed it was her gums hurting and the sucking made it worse, so I gave her two teething tablets, and then Stephen gave the bottle back, and she sucked it down without batting an eye. It's pretty much a miracle. It's homeopathic, and I don't know much about that stuff, so I'm going to check with Dr Adams at our visit on Friday and make sure she doesn't have anything bad to say about them, but so far, they seem to be helping Kemble so much, which definitely helps us in turn!! I don't know when her first teeth will pop in, but it seems like it could happen any day, because she is a drooling, chewing, gnawing machine! My mom even bought her Sophie the Giraffe, which got rave reviews on Amazon as the best teething toy ever, and Kemble does love it a lot, but sometimes it just gets her all riled up and she just goes crazy trying to chew on the whole thing at once as fast as she can!
We're just amazed at all she's learning and how much she grows every single day, but I'll save those details for my post later!
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