I finally organized and uploaded all the video we have of Hannah, you can find it at our beckerproject youtube channel
http://www.youtube.com/beckerproject#p/u

Today’s achievement: Hannah managed to get herself into sitting position in her crib. While this is a cool feat, and a great demonstration of her fantastic ab muscles, it also makes it easier for her to be more convincing as she screams that she isn’t tired. “See, I’m so not tired that I’m sitting up!!!!!!!!!!!”  Though, the fact that she is now soundly sleeping 7 minutes later does make it hard for us to believe that.

Hannah pretending she is king kong:

Hannah is really digging holding onto our hands and “walking” around. So Adam and I have bets going on when she’ll walk. I say October, he says September. Anyone else want in on this?

Hannah’s hilarious “crawl and splat” version of crawling.

Hannah has been a vocal one since birth, but she recently started making repetitive consonant sounds which is fun. First it was Ba, then Da and this week it’s been Ma. Unless she’s trying not to fall asleep in her cried then she yells Da over and over again, Adam says it’s because she knows he’s the softy who will go pick her up, haha.

This morning I was carrying her around on my hip and we let the dogs out and fed them breakfast and then sat down to feed her and I heard this little click so I looked to see what had fallen on the floor. It was a dog kibble. I smelled her hand and could tell she’d been holding it. I have no idea how she got it. Pretty funny. Must have stolen it from one of their bowls when I leaned down. Sneaky baby!

Hannah got to spend this last week hanging out with her cousins, here is last time her and Alayna played

and this time

She had a lot of fun this week, first trip to the aquarium, the county fair, first time petting a pig, sheep and goat, and some solid strides towards crawling.

Today Adam and I celebrated having been married for 5 years. Hannah is by far our best anniversary gift ever. She celebrated by making her first attempts at crawling.

Hannah’s first day of “crawling”

I uploaded a bunch of videos to our youtube account:

http://www.youtube.com/user/beckerproject#p/u

We got some new neighbors, and they smoke. We used to wait until it was cooler outside than inside and put a box fan in Hannah’s window to cool down her room, but now if we do that it makes our whole house smell like cigarettes, which apparently is bad for the baby. So we moved her crib into our “office” and Adam’s desk into her room, so now it’s a playroom/study and the room with the window not facing the neighbors is her crib room. Now we can still cool down her sleeping room without making the house smell. Though it does make for a pretty hot playroom not being able to open the window. It has been nice for Chloe though, she loves to sleep on the floor by the crib but I didn’t want her hair all over the carpet Hannah was learning to crawl on, but now that the crib isn’t in the playroom, Chloe gets to sleep by her baby.

Right after I had reassembled the crib in Hannah’s room I set her in it so she could sit and watch me work. I was watching a youtube video of how to reinstall her breathable bumper and looked away from her for a few seconds to watch the laptop. When I looked back she wasn’t sitting, she was standing holding onto the crib rail grinning at me. I was yelling for Adam and he came in and I was just yelling and pointing at the baby and he couldn’t figure out why I was so excited. I told him that I had put her in the crib sitting down, and now she was standing, and I hadn’t lifted her up. I ran to get the camera and the second I got back in the room she plopped down.

We tried to get her to do it again, but she was pretty worn out, and more interested in why we were so excited.

She’d been trying to pull up on other things, but usually if something is short enough for her to grip, it’s also very unstable, so she ends up pulling over lots of things like boxes.

Saturday we went to the Scandinavian Festival and enjoyed lots of yummy food.

She had a blast playing with some of her baby friends in a baby pool Sunday, though she was doing a lot of splashing, which wasn’t fair since the other babies don’t quite yet have the coordination to splash her back.

Hannah is 7 months old. She’s celebrating by cutting some new teeth. She got her two front bottom teeth about 2 months ago, and is now getting a bottom side and top side tooth. I bet other top teeth will follow shortly, but her smile will be pretty silly for a bit, since her only top tooth will be off to the side.

She’s doing a great job sleeping through the night, even while she’s been teething. I’m still trying to relearn how to sleep through, I keep waking up and wondering why she hasn’t cried for me.

Today at birth-to-three Hannah weighed 19 pounds, 5 ounces. She’s been gaining about an ounce a week for the last month or so. I’ve been told that one she gets more mobile she might lose a bit of weight, or just slim down some.

Hannah is getting motivated to figure out a new form of movement, she keeps seeing things she wants and straining towards them, but she can’t quite reach them. She’s been rolling, and getting onto her belly to pivot and then roll a different direction. Now she’s starting to try and get from sitting up to her belly, and ends up in crawling position for a few moments before falling forward on her face. It’s sad because she’s doing a fair amount of falling, but I guess that’s part of learning. Plus, hopefully falling doesn’t hurt too bad when you’re just a few inches from the floor.

I’m hoping for a repeat tutorial from Adam on how to upload videos to youtube, so I can show you all some video. I was a little more sleep deprived during the last tutorial, so none o it stuck. Luckily I have a very patient husband who will kindly show me again. =)

Lack of sleep in the Becker house brought us to the conclusion that it was time to try something new, and we had our doctors permission to let Hannah cry “a little” and her assurance that a baby her age should be able to go 6+ hours at night without eating, so we did an experiment.

We had been putting her in her crib at night and swaddling her, and patting her and rubbing her until she stopped screaming and gave in to sleep. Then in the middle of the night if it hadn’t been at least 4 hours since she’d eaten, I’d try and re-swaddle and pat and rub until she’d go back to sleep and not pick her up. Sometimes though, the screaming wouldn’t stop, so I’d either have to feed her, or pick her up and bounce her for a bit before I could put her back down and start the rubbing/patting again.

A few nights ago we decided we’d let her cry for 5 whole minutes after we put her down before we went back in to rub/pat. It seemed like forever listening to her cry, but by the time 4 minutes came, she was asleep. MAGIC!!!! Then she woke up at 1am, and only cried for 5 minutes before falling back asleep. Experiment success!

There have still be a few night wakings that have required intervention, but Sunday night she went down at 9 and slept till 8:30, last night she went down at 9:45, slept till 6, ate and went back to sleep till 9. My body is still adjusting to sleep, I wake up at night wondering where my baby is, and get all confused at my alarm clock in the morning since Hannah used to be my alarm.

Now she’s having a nap in her crib, and she didn’t even scream when I put her down.

I’m pretty excited that we’re turning this corner. Especially since that was really the only challenging part with her. She’s so much fun and changing so much every day. When I go to get her in the morning she is usually at the opposite end of the crib, on her belly, trying to peel the polka-dots off her crib sheet. She loves rolling and standing at her play table. She likes eating blueberries and peach in her little mesh feeder, and has been enjoying the veggies I pureed and froze for her.

We’ve got a few weeks where my work is slower before the fall bible studies kick off, so I’m excited to let her set the pace and see if she develops a schedule. I can’t believe she’ll be 7 months old on Saturday. The time is flying by!

We took Hannah to the Oregon Country Fair since we’d never been before. It was very fun, like traveling to a foreign country but only having to be on the bus for 30 minutes. My favorite part was all the costumes, and the parades, Hannah just enjoyed looking at all the brightly dressed people and napping in her jog stroller.