7 Months

How can my baby be 7 months old?

This seems like yesterday:

3 days old, just home from the hospital.

Now she looks closer to this:

Yes. I know this picture is old. We're getting more taken tomorrow though!

She used to sleep with her head buried in my chest. Now she's way too big for that. She won't even fit!

She used to need me to hold her head up for her. Now she cranes her head every which way to see what's going on.

She used to stare up at her mobile, excited by its movement. Now she doesn't just stare. She bats at whatever's in reach. And if she can get it, it goes straight to her mouth!

She used to need Mommy to hold her to put her to sleep. OK... Some things haven't changed!

For the curious, here's her new developments:

• She's teething! It's official. The doctor saw a little nubbin of a tooth well below the surface, but it's on its way! And if I look just right, I can sometimes see the tiny nubbin as well.
• She loves loves loves fruit, especially pears, pineapple, and strawberries And sweet potatoes. Squash, not so much. Carrots are more touch and go. Regardless though, the first bite she still makes that "I don't know what you're giving me but I'm prepared to hate it!" face.
• She's had her first fever. Mommy and Daddy (ok, really just Mommy) panicked because we couldn't figure out what was wrong. No stuffy nose. No vomiting. Didn't seem to be the ears so much. So we took her to the doctor, and she had a sore throat. She seems to be over it and happy now though.
• She's still not crawling, but she's moving around a whole lot more. If I just hold her on the couch, she's wiggling all around, pushing off whatever part of me is convenient. If she sees something she wants she dives for it, and really quickly. She has a new mark today from where she dove towards me while I was holding my laptop and she smacked her face into it. No tears over that one, but it left its mark.
• She's saying "baa baa baa" now. I was getting worried because I hadn't really heard a lot of consonant sounds out of her mouth yet. I don't know when she started this, but now it seems like she's always been doing it. I really do think this is a new accomplishment though. She's also very interested and watches my mouth whenever I make repetitive consonants at her. So I look at her and say "ma ma ma ma ma ma" and "da da da da da" a lot. She digs it though.
• She's finally sleeping better at daycare! She still doesn't sleep for longer than 45 minutes at a time, and one 45 minute stretch is still really good for her, but it's progress.
• She loves daycare. She's happy almost every time I go over there to see her, and I'm still over there a lot. The only times she's unhappy are when she's tired or when she's hungry and I'm running late. Other than that, she's smiley and talkative and loves playing with the other babies and teachers.
• She's screaching at the top of her lungs a lot now. This is her happy screach. She's screached for awhile, but it seemed to hit new levels today on the car ride into daycare. Healthy lungs? Yup.
• She loves being read to. We read Dinosaur's Binkit a lot. I don't know if it's her favorite or ours, but we all seem to dig all the Sandra Boynton books so far.
• She fights sleep still. Bedtime is and has always been the hardest part of our day with her. She's such a happy baby, but starting around 7pm she gets cranky, and it's downhill from there.

OK. That's enough for now. Although it's easy to go on and on about how wonderful I think my little baby is because I think every thing she does is perfect. I totally thought I would be the disciplinarian before we had her, and now it's so totally going to be Jason.