What a big week for Leah!

Leah had a big week. Lots of milestones. Her 7 mos birthday was on Sunday, please keep that in mind. First, she learned how to go from the crawling position to the sitting position. The first couple of times she did it she wasn't exactly sure what she had done- but we all cheered her on and she was extremely pleased with herself. However, the excitement was short lived as her new skill kept her up much the following few nights. She would constantly sit up through the night and just cry. No matter how many times we laid her down she would sit up again. After my 3rd night of severe sleep deprivation I was not thinking that this skill was so cool after all. Then, during this "new skill" phase she cut two teeth on the bottom front. They are very cute. Those also caused some night time disturbances.

At this point I haven't slept in 3 months, and things are not looking good. For whatever reason, Leah just likes to be up at night and has a hard time soothing herself. She recently began to stuff her blankie in her mouth and that was worrying me. So we tried the paci again. I tried to give it to her a couple of weeks ago and she wanted nothing to do with it. She took it! Praise the Lord! The child really does need to suck on something to sleep, and the paci has helped the last few nights, but she still has a love/hate with it. Sometimes she wants it and sometimes she doesn't. I cannot figure it out. So she is sleeping a little better at night, but when she does wake up, she still sticks her blankie in her mouth, rather than the paci, and I still have to go in her room to get her back to sleep. So the sleep deprivation looks like it may continue for a while.

But the really big news is that Leah started standing yesterday! She actually did it in her crib on Sunday night when I put her down. She was fussing and I looked on the monitor and she was crying because she had stood up and couldn't figure out how to get down! Needless to say, we have dropped her mattress to the low position so she cannot topple out of the crib. So yesterday she spent most of the day finding things to pull-up on. She was absolutely thrilled with her accomplishment and was screaming with joy. Of course Grace and Isaac were also thrilled and screamed with her too. I was hoping that she was so tired that she would have a good night of sleep, but she didn't. Ugh. Maybe she just got Grace's night sleeping gene.

Anyway, good times here. My little baby is right on track with her big brother to be walking at 10 months old. I cannot even imagine what kind of toll that will take on the Christmas tree this year.

This is Leah standing with big brother nearby to catch her if she falls.

And here is the action live!