Baby's latest developments:

1. She evidently thinks limes, lemons, and dill pickles are super tasty. Weird.

2. She can triumphantly pull herself up to a standing position.

3. Her first tooth is verrrryyy slllooowly millimetering itself up from gum level.

4. She's getting more fine muscle control, including poking everything for examination with her index finger.

5. She's developed a new game in her doorway jumper - put something on the floor, and she'll kick it just out of reach and then swing and stick out her foot to get it back. Repeat.

6. She's more regularly only waking once at night again, which is great for me and sleep!

7. Just in the last few days she has started actually stepping (i.e. trying to walk, rather than jumping or stumbling), hilariously by lifting up her left foot very high in the air and sticking it out straight before bringing it down again.

5 years together, and 8 month old baby!

Brandon and I have been together 5 years tomorrow, and baby girl's 8 months old today! What a month!

We still haven't picked up our Christmas tree, but we're planning to do it tomorrow when we have use of Brandon's mom's larger vehicle. Ah, logistics.

The baby's vocabulary has expanded from "ba ba ba" to "na na" and "ma ma" with an occasional "la" and an even more rare "daddy." Who cares if it's accidental? She's also crawling, though haltingly - I'm sure she's preparing to wreak havoc on everything in sight!

Time for me to go clean up the kitchen...we made waffles today and made a big mess in the process. (New waffle iron - haven't gotten the recipe and amount quite figured out yet.)

Almost 8 months old!

It's hard to believe that baby girl is going to be 8 months old next week. This past month has flown by!

She's more interested in eating her solid food now, though the whole solid pooping thing was a bit upsetting at first...ah, the joys of babyhood! We're looking forward to getting our Christmas tree this weekend (I don't know that I've ever gotten one this early before) and having family over for the holidays. What fun!

Baby girl has also started babbling "ba-ba-ba-ba" in the past couple of weeks, which is super cute. I wonder what's next?

Yet more photos!

Ooh, I'm on it this month!

I just posted some more photos, for your viewing pleasure!

Milestones abound recently...baby girl's not crawling yet, but she's getting up on her hands and knees all the time and sort of bouncing. I anticipate she'll figure it out quite soon.

Also no teeth yet, but she did have some teething pain a couple of nights ago - baby Orajel worked like a charm. Then of course Brandon had to put some on his tongue and see what it was like - he was talking funny for a little while (the numbing works).

She's also stable enough to sit in a high chair, so we finally had to break down and buy one - it's being shipped now. She's getting some solid food every day, much to her chagrin...I can get her to eat the rice cereal without much problem, but she hasn't been too interested in the other foods I've tried. I also unfortunately made WAY too much of the pureed peas and sweet potato a couple of days ago - good thing I can freeze it! We're not discouraged, though - I have no doubt she'll be getting used to food very soon!

This will also be the first month when we don't have a well-baby checkup, which is a change. She has her flu shots awaiting her in January, though, and I can say from personal experience that they hurt, so she won't be happy about that. But at least she gets a respite for now!

I can hardly believe it's already almost the end of October - we're going to a wedding on Saturday, so not much for the Halloween festivities - though I think we're going to get baby girl a costume anyway, since she can get away with it. I wanted to make something, but of course didn't get my act together, so I'll probably just make a pass by Babys R Us.

That's all for now...

New photos - finally!

I have finally posted some new photos! (It only took me 4 months, right?) Click here to skip to the most current page of the album.

You can also click on the photo link to the right - but keep in mind that the newest photos will be at the end.

Enjoy!

There's no accounting for taste...

My mom and I were in a local store Monday browsing around, and there was a baby section so of course we had to take a look. There were a number of toys, and since I was holding Laurna facing out in front of me, she got to take a good look. She immediately started reaching with both hands towards this one particular toy (above), one neither my mom nor I would have ever chosen for her (ugly, much?). But baby girl had fallen in love, for whatever reason.

She's clearly already her own person! :o)

#1 awesome parent gadget (or anyone gadget!)

Temporal scanner thermometer. So. Awesome.

Check it out.