Shields Family blog: April 2012

Well it's been another month and a half since we've updated unfortunately. We know a lot of you are able to see pics of Paige on Facebook, so it makes it easy sometimes to forget to update her blog as well!!
As of April 9th, Paige will be 8 months old already! As always, she's changing and doing new things almost daily it seems. She's really made a lot of strides lately in her ability to sit up by herself on the floor. Like any parents, we were a little worried that she was behind a bit, but were told by our pediatrician that bc Paige is a "smaller" baby in weight, it might take her a little bit longer to do some of these things. In the last couple of weeks though she has made huge strides! She still hates laying on her stomach, and immediately(within 5 seconds) rolls over onto her back. It's actually pretty funny to see how quickly she does it!
With the nice spring weather we've had almost all of March, we were able to go on a few walks in the stroller, and of course Paige loves being outside listening to all the sounds and seeing everything around her. We've also included some pics of her sitting outside in her swing while mommy and daddy did some yard work.
The hardest thing we've had to deal with was Paige being sick a couple of times with ear infections this past month. The first time was just in one ear, and she got over it really quick with medication. However, the second time she actually had a double ear infection, which hit her a lot harder. She ran a pretty high fever up to 102, had congestion and a really nasty thick cough. Our poor girl was miserable for a good 4-5 days, but just this last weekend has seemed to have gotten over it except for a little cough every once in a while. It's been nice to have our smiling, giggling, goofy girl back!!
We're excited for what the rest of spring and summer will hold as she learns to start crawling and moving around and even talking. She really says, "da-da-da", a lot(and sometimes really loud), but has also just started to say, "na-na-na". We have quite a bit of traveling coming up, and also look forward to being able to just sit outside with her and enjoy the weather. We might get a baby pool yet this summer and also plan on putting in a little sandbox for her as well.