Seven Months

I think I say this every month...but I can't believe she's seven months old!!!

At seven months, baby girl is crawling all over the place. She's still not *real* fast, but she can go for sure. I sat her on the floor outside the bathroom today with a couple of toys and by the time I was done and washing my hands, there she was, tugging on my pant legs. When she crawls over to me when I'm sitting down, she'll ram her head into my shin. Can't be comfy, but it's so cute!

Baby girl is eating like crazy. I keep saying that I'm so glad she's a good eater. If she were a bad eater and a bad sleeper, I don't know what I'd do! She loves to nurse, but also take a bottle like a champ. Every morning she has 1/4 cup of baby oatmeal mixed with organic pear juice (to help keep her tummy moving). Starting this past weekend, she's getting a veggie at lunchtime. Then, while we eat our dinner she has 3 or 4 ice cubes worth of veggies. So far she's had carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, peas, and green beans and loved all of them. Of course she likes the orange veggies a bit better since they're sweeter, but she hasn't balked at anything.

She's such a big girl about sitting in her high chair. She sometimes gets a bit fussy when the tray is on, but after she's done eating, we clean her up, take off the tray, and push the chair all the way up to the table. We give her plastic measuring cups (the 1/4 cup one was on the table from measuring out oatmeal) and she bangs them on the table. The first night this happened, we were all rocking out Bon Jovi. It's a great way to keep her occupied while we finish eating or just hanging out, listening to the radio.

Her sleeping still isn't great, but we're getting there. She'd like to sleep 12 hours a night or so, I think. We had one night where DH put her down pretty awake and he tried to soothe her to sleep, but she kept giggling and playing with him. Eventually he laid down on the floor and I put my head down and closed my eyes while sitting in the rocker. She got bored and just rolled over on her tummy and went to sleep.

She's definitely a thumb sucker. She now sucks her thumb and pulls on her ears when she's tired. She even does it in the middle of dinner.

Baby girl has recently started bouncing. She's a bit erratic about it and will only do it while being held, but it's super fun.

My favorite thing that she does right now is give kisses. I have no idea if she means to do it, but I'm the only one she'll do it to. She usually grabs my face (and sometimes my hair with the other hand) and brings her mouth to my cheek (or my mouth sometimes), open wide, and lick/suck my face. It's the sweetest thing!

She still prefers to be next to her mommy whenever possible. We can be sitting on the floor together and she'll turn and crawl up onto my lap or turn all the way around and lift her arms up to be picked up. Just this past weekend she fell asleep in our bed without any coaxing, just because she was snuggled up on mommy.

That leads me to my favorite times with her--snuggling in our bed on weekends. DH will typically get up with her if she gets up obnoxiously early and then bring her back up when she needs to nurse. I'll nurse her and we'll play a bit in bed. Some mornings we can coax her to take her nap a little early and all of us snuggle in bed together.

She can be quite impatient. Just recently she's started banging on her tray when we aren't feeding her quickly enough. And while she likes being naked, she doesn't like the process of getting changed.

Everything still goes in her mouth. She loves most of all to chew on cloth things--her clothes, her jacket, stuffed animals, tags, blankets... We always tell her she's going to get a fuzzy tongue. No teeth yet. We've had quite a few instances of some really stringy drool, TONS of chewing...but no teeth yet. Not concerned, just wondering when they're going to show up!

She's really getting the hang of standing and still prefers to stand over crawling. She will hold onto the side of her Exersaucer with one hand and stand there. Of course, we put our hands under her arms, just in case, but don't touch her. It amazes us every single time. She's *trying* to figure out walking while holding our fingers. It isn't the balance or supporting her weight that's getting her...it's actually moving her legs. She tends to walk a tightrope and that's not real conducive to learning to walk!

Baby girl loves to be upside down. I always thought she just hated being upside down, which is why she was breech, but no--you dangle her upside down and she's really happy!

She loves to squeal, especially when mommy will respond with her own squeal.

She's ticklish, but only mommy can get her to roll over to run away and squealing from being tickled. She squirms a bit when others do it, but not as much as when mommy does it!

Another great moment of the last month was when she crawled to us for the first time when we picked her up at daycare. What a great feeling to see her crawling to us, ready to see us after a long day!!!

She's still wearing size 2 diapers and 3-6 month clothes. Both are getting fairly snug and we've had to phase out a few 3-6 month outfits. I plan to exchange some of our size 2 diapers very soon for some size 3s. I have plans for her to wear a 6-9 month outfit (her first) this weekend (a sweater DH's dad picked out for her, who we'll see on Saturday).

She loves being rocked to sleep. Daddy reads her a story, then mommy comes up, lays her on her side, and starts rocking and singing. She immediately pops that thumb into her mouth. Mommy sings "You Are My Sunshine", "The Alphabet Song", "Jesus Loves Me", "Carmen Ohio", and "Amazing Grace", just to name a few.

She's giggle like crazy if you blow raspberries on her belly or make her fly.

If I can think of anything else, I'll come back and add it! I don't want to forget her the way she is right now--she's such a joy!