Lillian - 7 Months, She knows what she wants when she wants it... and how to get it!

So I'm terribly behind... Lillian is 8 1/2 months as I write this (and SUPER older as I publish it!). Fortunately for all of us, I already had a 'checklist' here in the blog of the things that were so 'right now' in Lillian's life as she turned 7 Months. And here they are!

- She has 'conductor hand' - whenever she has anything in her hand she holds her hand up over her hand and waves it back and forth as if she's directing a symphony (baby genius anyone?)

- She is army crawling to what she wants

- She started a sippy cup and she's pretty good at holding it, but not yet good at tilting her head back to get the liquid to fill the nipple

- She loves glasses (mine and hers), but always wants to take them off

- She raises her arms when she's ready for you to pick her up

- She is in LOVE with tags, buckles and straps

- She hates getting dressed (particularly putting her arms in sleeves) and is very squirmy for diaper changes

- She has started solids and though a bit of a rough start (lots of crying and head shaking and refusing to eat) she now eats pears, oatmeal cereal, baby yogurt, avocado and carrots. She's eaten sweet potatoes but we need to try them again because lately they've been a challenge.

As far as her activities go, when she isn't army crawling, she loves her walker, exersaucer (and can now turn around on her own to play with other toys), her jumper, and other musical toys. She's also started expressing her frustration through whines or tears if you move her from a toy she wants (or maybe something that isn't a toy that she wanted to play with - she LOVES electrical cords of course!) and I imagine that is a new addition to her 'skill set' that may be around a while!

Sleeping is getting better, but she's still waking up about once a night to eat sometime between 2 and 4 am. There are no new teeth this month - just the bottom two that we spotted in her 5th month of life.

Last but not least, at around 7 months her awareness seems to have skyrocketed. She is VERY attentive to me, daddy, Huck, other dogs (loves them!), other people, noises etc. Loud noises that never phased her before are scary and she will hear the noise and then look to us to see if we heard it too and how we are reacting.

Favorite age so far :)

Lillian - 9 Months

So I promise I'm trying to get back into the groove here, but work and home remodeling have taken over my life... oh yeah, and I have a precious, very mobile little girl!

Three days after Lillian turned 8 months, we went on a trip to College Station to see mine and Michael's families while Michael went to Lousiana for a guys weekend like he does every Fall. On that trip, Lillian began crawling on her knees - before that moment she had been army crawling. And, just like I suspected, once she realized that she could crawl on her knees, she began pulling up. At my Ninny and Opas house in Bryan, Lillian pulled to a standing position using her walker that we'd parked on the carpet (to keep it from rolling away). She returned to that walker again and again that weekend and tried and tried again to stand.

In true kiddo form, once she figured out that she could do it, she wanted to do it again and again and again. Crawling to things so she could pull to standing, falling, more crawling, standing, bonking her head, etc. consumed months 8 to 9. She is a VERY busy girl and it keeps me pretty busy just trying to keep up!

Once she became a little better at pulling up she decided she'd start reaching for new things and sometimes letting go, allowing herself to hover unsteadily on her two feet. She squats, she kneels and plays, she is doing everything she can to get to the things she wants! She's also started climbing on some things, putting her knees up and then figuring out how to get her feet up as well. The picture below is taken from above and it's classic 'mobile Lillian' - as she walked along the outside of her crib she saw her paci and lovey blanket on the inside... she just had to have them!

The consonant sounds abound with "mama" and "dada" and "lala" and "gaga" all over the place, but none of them clearly tied to any person or thing, and none of them repeated too consistently just yet even with prompting.

This sweet little girl has a mouth full of teeth. We talk about her 'chompers' and they make for such an adorable smile! We're at 7 teeth now with 4 on the top and 3 on the bottom. You can see in the pic below that the one tooth to the left of her two bottom teeth has come in strong, but there aren't any signs of the other one of that pair just yet!