7 months and growing strong

My sweet girl is now 7 months old!  It's crazy to me all the skills she has gained in such a short time!


growin strong!

E has really started to develop a personality.  Everywhere we take her people comment on 2 things: her cheeks and her calm/happy demeanor.
And it's true, she does have deliciously cute cheeks that require daily nibbling and kissing.  And she has developed into a very happy calm little girl.  She cries when she's hungry, tired, frustrated, wants mommy or needs a new diaper.  But the rest of the time she is happy as a clam. 

She quite often is quiet and plays with her toys.  Sometimes while playing she will put a toy in her mouth and make noises, loud ones.  It's funny to watch at home, less so in a restaurant, though usually people around us just smile.

In her 7th month of life E has learned a few new tricks.  She's been working super hard on trying sit up independently.  When placed in a sitting position she can stay there for as long as she likes.  She's learned how far away she can reach for things without tipping over and she's learned how to catch herself and correct if she starts to tip over. AND just a few days before she turned 7 months old she sat fully up on her own!  Most time she still gets stuck in a tripod with one arm down but she's sitting fully up more and more often!

 7 months has also brought the new experience of trying solid food.  Her favorite is still broccoli and she really seems to hate baby oatmeal, no matter what I mix in.  Though she likes it baked into teething biscuits so maybe it's a texture thing.
She also had her first experience with a stomach bug.  Two loads of laundry and a trip to the doctor (just to be sure) later and she was better within 12 hours of throwing up.

E's Ojisan came to visit for a week.  E loved playing with him going to the park, going swimming and eating Dim Sum!  She had the whole waitstaff and several of the other patrons at the Dim Sum restaurant entranced because she was so willing to try all the yummy Dim Sum.  For the record, she seems to like Chinese Broccoli too and likes eating off of chopsticks, though mommy kept hitting the back end of the sticks on her car seat and dropping the food onto E.

July also brought E's first fireworks!  The weather was the nicest it's been for 4th of July in years and Mommy and Daddy brought earplugs(which kept falling out, but we made them work) so the show was pretty enjoyable.  E watched the explosions with nary a protest.  Though keeping her up that late made the night shift pretty difficult.  E seems to follow the rule of the more tired she is the less she will sleep.

 Since Ojisan taught so many other people's babies to swim Mommy thought it would be fun for Ojisan to go to the pool with E for the first time.  Ojisan told Mommy and Daddy to dunk her under the water, she'd hold her breath and it would be good because it will help  her not be afraid of the water later.  The idea of submerging a nearly 7 month old baby in the water was terrifying to Mommy and Daddy, but with a little gentle encouragement from Ojisan Daddy took the plunge, literally!  E did great she was a bit startled but held her breath and didn't cry when brought back up.  Now every time we go to the pool E gets dunked at least a couple times and still doesn't mind.  She really does like drinking the pool water though....Ojisan didn't have any suggestions on how to prevent that, so Mommy and Daddy just try to minimize it and embrace the fact that the chlorine will hopefully kill off any germs and that urine is technically sterile (gross!)



This month's family portrait!  pool time, with
floating monkey and a duck on E's head!

The night before turning 7 months old E also accomplished another major milestone, she crawled!  She'd been super close to crawling, and had taken a few crawls forward at a Little Gym class to try to get a rattle but at home kept getting stuck.  She'd get into position, rock a little, rise up on her toes, fall back down, move her left hand, then both legs and then she'd fall down.  She couldn't figure out that she needed to move that right hand, it would just stay planted on the floor the whole time.  While talking on Skype with her grandparents and Oma E was hell bent on getting the computer or the phone so that was enough motivation for her to move that right hand!  She crawled across the living room floor after it, taking breaks to protest of course!

She also has two teeth!  Her right lower incisor is mostly in and her left lower incisor is just poking through.  Her doctor also said her upper two were almost in!