We have a crawler.

A baby crawler. Well, the beginnings of one. A baby crawler that blows raspberries and has saliva slobbering all down her chin. It took her a while to realize that in order to move forward she has to use her legs. Before she understood this, she'd just keep moving forward with her arms and then land on her belly. But today, while my mother was visiting we noticed she tried to shimmy her legs a little bit. So we took off those cumbersome pants and let her get enough friction to make some progress. Perhaps this was why she took a 2 hour nap this morning - preparation for the milestone ahead. Perhaps this is why she's been waking up to 8 times after we lay her down for bed at night... lets hope this leads to better sleep habits.

I am Seven Months Old and if you

put something on my head, I have figured out how to pull it off instead of just kicking and flailing!

Angela is so so very close to crawling. She is surprisingly quite mobile even without crawling, through a combination of getting into a crawl position and then efficiently plopping her bum back into a seated position without toppling over, she makes her way around the floor.                                                                                             I don't know quite what it is, but her sleep habits have actually gotten worse. A six hour stretch of sleep used to be normal, and then we were getting closer to 7-8 hours of sleep. Now it seems 4 hours is the longest she will go. And then on top of it, sometimes it's hard to get her to sleep in her crib, the second we try to lie her down, she wakes up and starts crying. So lately, I've been putting her back in the bed with us because she'll sleep lying next to me. Forget her falling asleep on her own, that has not happened for a long time.

She's been rather cranky this past week and I haven't pushed the solid foods too much because I didn't think she was in the right mood for it, and on top of it I was tired from her crankiness and just didn't have the energy to try. However, the past couple of days she's been happier and is doing a good job with the rice cereal and even accepted some mixed with banana,which initially she gave an "BLECHK" face but then was eager for it.

On Days Like This

On days like this, when Angela isn't on a good sleep schedule (for whatever reason, this time I'm not so sure), barely napping (as in today with 2 naps - one that I don't think hit 30 minutes), a bit clingy and crabby at the same time, and totally bored with everything I try to do to entertain her -

I try to stop and remember that there are so few days that she will be in this stage of her life. I will only get to experience her as a baby once, for about a year (before she starts walking & talking) and that if I resent these days or wish they'd go by faster, I'm actually cheating myself. I can never go back to these days once they're over.

Someday in the future I'm going to be with her somewhere and a cute young baby will pass by and I'll say "Oh, I miss those days." I don't want to miss them because I was too busy trying to survive them, I want to miss them because I was able to appreciate how precious she was and how awesome it is that I am her mother and that I get to participate in guiding her on the many paths that she will travel during the course of her life. I want to know that I did the best job raising her and that I enjoyed the process as much as I could. Because, no matter what my salary is, or how in-shape I am, being her mom is both the hardest and most rewarding job I will ever have.

Small Milestone

Today while visiting down in Hingham, Angela was playing with a teething ring my mother had purchased for her and began passing it from one hand to the other. Right - Left - Right - Left etc etc. She seemed somewhat interested in this newly found method of self-interaction. Mom and I however, were much more impressed - "oh look, she's passing from one hand to the other!"

Goo Goo Goo

Angela is getting stronger and stronger every day, especially this past week. She's gone from trying to lift her hips up off the floor to now getting them fully off the floor and she's been rocking back and forth. Today she even lifted one arm off the floor, while in this position, and actually tried to sit herself back up on her bum!

She is very adventurous trying to climb over my legs when I have her sit in between them, climbing OUT of her bassinet which I was using as a mini play pen (that ended quickly), and sometimes when she tries to grab toys out of her reach, I think she is going to fall forward but she actually manages to pull herself back and I'm just amazed.

We're hearing lots of "goo goo goo" these days as well as "bbbbwwwuu" no "da da" yet.

The best was this Easter weekend when, while watching the Rallo's dog fetch a ball, Angela was laughing hysterically the entire time. I wish I had caught it on video and hope she'll do it next time we're over there so I can get it.

Tonight while we were at the grocery store, she was so intent on looking in the same direction that we were pushing the cart, that she twisted her body around and held onto the back rest of the cart with one arm so that she could look forward.

We have not made a ton of progress on the solid food front. Some days she does ok with the rice cereal and other days she has no interest. I tried other foods a few weeks ago and that did not go over very well at all, it seems these new flavors are too potent for her at this point, so I'm backing off a bit.