This is a very extreme overload of pictures, but I feel like we somehow managed to catch every one of her expressions, and I can't bear to delete any of them! Plus I may be feeling a bit guilty over not having written enough about this little burst of sunshine. So here we go:
This is our sweeter-than-punkin-pie baby girl. She'll be the baby for quite sometime and I'm trying to snatch as many free minutes as I have the energy to love on her.
Camille's Pet names: Chameleon, Millie, Millie May, Millie May Today (from a song Marty sings to her), Mill (which I said I'd never call her, but it's what Gabe always calls her and it's stuck for all of us), and Darlin' (which Gabe also calls her - cutest thing EVER). The one nickname I envisioned we might all say from time to time, Cam, is pretty much never used. I guess she's just more of a Millie.
She is such a happy, mellow and content baby. In that way, she's similar in personality to Gabe. However, she's more vocal than he ever was. She does this funny growling sound all the time, and has been doing it since she was tiny. She cooed, squealed, and talked early and makes lots of sounds, and they are mostly all happy ones! At five months old she started saying "Ma" when she would cry and I figured it was just a fluke and she was too young for that. But when Marty and my mom and the kids all heard it, and she would look right at me with a pitiful face while saying it, I realized she was serious and wanted Ma.
So far, this little thing is painfully shy. My first. I guess it's my turn for one of those. I can't hand her off to anyone without her having a panic attack and screaming at the top of her lungs. She'll go to Daddy, B&B, Grandma O, and our friend across the street (which is why I was so relieved she was there while Marty was in the hospital). She's been taken out of Sacrament meeting by a number of people while I've been playing the organ and Marty's been juggling the babies. Sometimes it's just easier for me to play piano is RS or wherever while holding her. It's not a separation anxiety thing, because she'll be left to her own devices just fine in the house and doesn't mind a bit if I leave her in her room alone. It's just a stranger anxiety issue. I'm trying not to give in to her, because I just can't. I have a life to live, and one that doesn't (yet) include the luxury of having many relatives nearby who she knows and warms up to. The one thing I've almost given up on is baby-sitters. Marty and I have been pretty good in the past about hiring sitters for dates, but she just doesn't calm down for them and I feel bad for the poor girls. Maybe she'll grow out of it...
I'm grateful she's been such a sweet and calm infant. For the first month and a half of her life, she was as cranky and spitty as can be. She projectile vomited (across the room) at least once a day and was just fussy in general. This hit my post-partum sanity pretty hard and I was bracing myself for a tumultuous seven months like we spent with Baby Bryce. She had an ultra-sound to try and figure out what was going on with the vomiting, but we just never found anything and after about 5 or 6 weeks, she was down to once a day, then every other day, then once a week, and she finally stopped.
However, the projectile vomiting started back up at 6 months, but only when I gave her rice cereal. She'd eat it fine, but then randomly vomit and hour or two later. So I finally took her off of it and just started giving her baby food. But, STINKER!! She has a hyper-sensitive gag reflex and I cannot give her anything green! About two out of three times, she'll eat it, gagging all the while, and eventually gag so hard she'll throw up the entire contents of her stomach! I hate to be a quitter and give in to my kids, but it's just not worth it anymore.
But other than the stranger-anxiety and all the vomiting, she is seriously low-maintenance and high-yield. Strange terms to use on a baby, I know, but they serve the purpose. She entertains herself fabulously.
Probably another reason she seems low-maintenance is because the other three can so often be found entertaining her. They fight over her the same as they do over certain toys. They take turns, sometimes with the timer, and are very particular about getting their fair share. It's a pretty sweet deal for me. Yes, four little ones are a lot of work, but the perk of them entertaining each other is a big one.
Gabe becomes more attentive all the time, as she loves him and laughs at him more and more. I pray hard that he will be intuitive about how he can treat her, and what is ok and not ok to do with Baby. I'm impressed at how naturally he seems to pick up on the rules. He's very good about snatching away an inappropriate object ("No no, Baby!") and handing her a toy ("Heeee, Mill!"). I do still catch him sitting on her from time to time, but the funny thing is she doesn't seem to mind. She makes him giggle, and it's often followed by, "ooooh, cuuuuuute!" When we go to get her from her nap he says, "Hiiiii, Darlin'!" There are a million other examples of the sweet attention Gabe pays to Camille. Oh, and if her hand ever goes to her mouth, all three siblings spring into action to knock it away. She's used to that commotion now, and it no longer gives her a heart attack.
She's a champion sleeper, and has been from the beginning. She starting sleeping through the night at 2 months and hardly ever has an off-night. Being a thumb-sucker might have something to do with it.
She's an efficient scooter and has been practicing her crawling for a couple weeks now. I predicted she'd be crawling by Christmas. Her birthday is just two days after Bryce's, so it's fun to compare their milestones. Bryce crawled right before Christmas. She took her first crawling steps about a week after Christmas. But she still uses scooting for her main mode of transportation. She'll crawl a few steps, rock back and forth, and then (quickly!) scoot wherever she's headed. Usually the bathroom upstairs or the tile downstairs.
She started clapping a couple weeks ago and is shy about that, too. The cycle goes like this: She'll clap, I'll praise her, she'll look down, then smile and bury her head in my chest. Then repeat. She buries her head every time. I can't get enough of it.
She is our fourth snuggly baby! I guess it's in the genes. She'll let me rock her in her rocking chair for as long as I want and nestle right into me. Plus, I get more of the shy smile. When I smile down at her, she smiles and buries her head.
We just stopped nursing last week. It was time. I'm sad, but not quite as much as I usually am. Might have something to do with the fact that I've been pregnant, nursing, pregnant again AND nursing, and then nursing some more for the last three years.
She's a tiny little thing. A few months ago she was tall and low in weight, and actually lost an ounce from her doctor appointment a couple months before. So then we got to experience the joy of weight checks. She lost most of her newborn hair and it seems to be growing in lighter with more red. I still think she looks like Brynn, but I've heard from a few that knew Brynn as a baby that they don't see it. She grinds her teeth, which is funny, because she barely has her uppers. It makes me shudder.
Basically, she is as sweet as can be and has captured our hearts and has all five of us wrapped around her little finger. I am so blessed to have her in my life. I love to watch the kids maul her as much as I love to do the job myself. That's been one of my big surprises of parenting. I didn't consider how much joy it would bring me to watch my kids interact (I was, however, anticipating the trial of it, and was right to do so!). Awe, Camille May!!! Stop growing so fast!!!
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