Declarations of a King: Lyra Rose- 7 months

This adorable baby girl never stops moving! Her personality is starting to show more and more everyday.

*She's as sweet as a Rose still. She reaches for me and Sel with huge open arms and does a little hug when you pick her up.

* This week has been HUGE for her. Her two bottom teeth popped all the way through and show when she smiles. She gnawed on me a tiny bit when they were coming through, but nothing too terrible. I was really surprised to see them as Rowan didn't have any teeth until right before his 1st birthday.

* She is an awesome eater! During our 2-month West Coast adventure, I watched my sis-in-law give my nephew all sorts of food. Baby Robert is 6 weeks older than Lyra, but was amazing at eating whole bananas, graham crackers, literally whatever they gave him. She told me a bit about a book called Baby Led Weaning which essentially encourages you to give your child non-mushed up food so they learn to chew first instead of just swallowing. Lyra is a huge fan of the method. Her fav foods right now include: Rice, cheerio's, bananas, graham crackers, mashed potatoes, beans... I am ashamedly putting french fries up here. I was so saintly with Rowan's food progression and have failed miserably as a mother with Lyra. While traveling, we had our fair share of eating out and the easiest thing I could give her to eat was usually a french fry. Her new year's resolution is to eat healthier ;)

*Lyra is a love-slapper. She expresses love by face-raking everyone. Bespectacled people are her type. She gives anyone with glasses an extra dose of love slaps. Rowan has moved past getting upset that "she's hitting him" and accepting that she's just trying to express her love for him

* These two of mine are such a sweet pair. They genuinely love one another. Rowan will be SO tender with her that my heart cannot handle it. He calls her Wya Rose and I sort of hope it never stops. He is still her favorite form of entertainment, but this month has brought on a new favorite level of parenting for me -the joint laughter. Both Rowan and Lyra will roll around together making each other laugh. It's the most magical thing in the universe. I always wanted a brother to add to our two-sister crew and now get to see what a loving bro-sis relationship looks like.

* She is crawling. Explosion of tears. She moved from army crawling to full-knee. She also insists on pulling herself up to stand on everything she can reach. She falls a lot these days, but almost never cries. She's been toughened up by her older bro.

* She's in 12-month clothing, 90% for height and 75% for weight. She feels significantly smaller than Rowan was, but her cheeks remain gigantic. Most people talk to me about her cheeks or her eyes.

* Her eyes are so MAGICAL! Rainbow eyes still and I hope they keep that way. Her right eye is still darker, but both have a kaleidoscope of blue, green, grey, brown, and gold. I know I've talked about it every month, but I just love them so much. They are such a pretty shape, size and color. Lucky little girl.

* She claps her hands together and has happy seizures. She'll get so happy that she bounces, stiffens and falls back. It reminds me of those narcoleptic goats.

* She doesn't sleep the way she used to. She will usually sleep from around 8pm-1am, then will be up constantly from then on until 7:30am. We tried to let her self-soothe the past few days, but it only enrages her more. She will press her face against the pack-n-play and screech her sweet lungs out. The conundrum here is that means we don't sleep no matter what tactic we employ. We let her self-soothe, we listen to her screech until our hearts can't handle it anymore. I wake up and rock her in the chair, we both fall asleep in a miserable way. I pull her into bed and fall asleep before I can transfer her back to the pack-n-play. I do feel much more accustomed now to not sleeping than I did with Rowan. She is still a way better sleeper than he was/is and we both haven't slept for years now, so it doesn't phase us too much.

We certainly love her! I wish I had more time to talk about her or even just spend one-on-one time with her, but every minute with her and our sweet Rowan are blessed ones.