Seven Months

Seven Months?! How did we get here so fast? "Seven months" just sounds so ... so old! "Seven months" means she's a real baby-baby and it for sure means she's not a newborn anymore. When did THAT happen?!? Actually, she's a whole heck of a lot more fun and cries a whole lot less now that she's not a newborn anymore, so I won't complain about leaving that phase behind. "Seven months" also means she's more than half way to her first birthday! And you better believe there's already been some talking and planning about how that first birthday party is going to play out.

Here are some new developments as Maribelle heads into her seven month:

* She sits like such a little lady now! She's gotten very good at holding herself up, and she weeble-wobbles a little less every day. I think this means I've got to get her some "big girl" toys that encourage sitting and (gasp!) crawling! The rattles and little stuffed toys just won't cut it for much longer.

* She's becoming quite the mocking bird these days and gets a kick out of fake coughing. She's even starting to mimic some of the sounds and vocal tones that we make.

* She weighs 15 lbs, 11 ounces.

* She's sampled her way through all the Stage 1 veggies and is now onto fruit! So far there hasn't been a food that she down-right refuses, although she'll only tolerate a few spoon fulls of bananas and doesn't particularly like prune juice. At this point she's had avocado, sweet potato, green beans, peas, carrots, acorn squash, bananas, peaches and prune juice (Soon she's going to try full-on prune puree because, well, solids haven't been too kind to Miss M's digestive system, if you know what I mean.).

* One of my FAVORITE developments so far is the fact that Grandma A. has taught Maribelle how to wave "bye-bye"! Of course it's not a full-fledge emphatic wave of the hand, but more of a subtle opening and closing of the fist and fingers, but it's still so darn cute. We have to hold her arm up to get her to do it, and she's getting better and better at it. There are even times when I see her opening and closing her hand while she's doing other things ... like breastfeeding. Is she trying to tell me something?!?!

* Her feet can finally touch the ground when she's in her jumperoo, so she's just starting to get the hang of jumping. However, as you can see in the video below, she only jumps when she sees or touches the red bird that hangs above her. I'm starting to think she has a thing for birds. When she was a little younger and would fuss, I'd take her into our kitchen and let her stare at the bird plates on our wall, and she would be mesmerized. Next time I'm feeling cranky, I just might try that myself.