3 Days

That's how long it took her to figure out how to stand using the LeapFrog deal. Not only that, but while I was taking pictures she would let go for a couple seconds because she was so excited. As soon as she'd start to lose her balance, she'd grab on to the table again. She did this several times before falling.

Finger Foods

I get a newsletter in the mail every couple of months from the hospital where Abby was born which talks about milestones, games to play, safety, etc. I received the latest one about stuff for 7 & 8 month-olds a little over a week ago. One of the topics was finger foods. I didn't realize Abby was old enough already, but I bought some "veggie puffs" that melt in her mouth to experiment with. It went better than I expected. I didn't have to go fishing in her mouth once! I did have to scoop some of them out of the little pocket in her bib several times, but they all made it in her mouth eventually.





















In other feeding news, Abby can now hold her own bottle. She tried to a couple of months ago, but she just couldn't get it up high enough. I'd start to hold it and let go when she tried to hold it herself. Now that she's stronger and much more coordinated, I started trying again recently. This time, I'd hold the bottle in front of her and let her hold it from the beginning. The first few times, she still had trouble angling it right, and as soon as I'd try to help her out she would lose interest and let go. I was surprised it only took a few days to get her to hold it completely on her own. She still struggles when she gets toward the end, but she can manipulate it to get it that far down. Next step: sippy cup. I've started giving her a sippy cup with water here and there to play with. She can get it in her mouth, but she hasn't yet figured out that there's liquid in it to drink. She thinks it's for chewing.

Lots of Pictures

Since it's been so long that I posted, I figured I owed the grandparents some pictures of the cuteness.













See those toys in the corner by the couch? I have a box there with the smaller stuff, and some bigger toys around. As soon as she started crawling, she went right to that corner.

She'll Be Walking Before We Know It

Abby LOVES her "LeapFrog Learning Table." Yesterday, we finally put the legs on it because she is constantly all over it. Plus, she's gotten pretty good at pushing herself to standing with her legs when an object is the right height. She doesn't pull herself up with her upper body. Instead, she pulls herself up to kneeling, then uses her lower body to straighten out her legs. If the object she has used to hold herself up is the right height, she is standing straight up. Otherwise, she ends up bent over. So far, the only object she can stand straight up right away with is us. If we're on the floor lying sideways, she can easily use our shirts and our bodies for leverage and get herself to standing. This is one of her favorite things to do. She is constantly climbing all over us. Also, she's figured out how to climb over our calves to get to the other side.

Another favorite object to stand bent over on is the Learning Table, so we figured with the legs on it would be a good height for her to practice standing. She hasn't quite gotten there yet, but she easily gets up onto her knees, and she's definitely trying to stand. She just can't rest her weight on it like she can with us to make it easier to straighten out her legs. She is LOVING the new challenge, though.













If we stand her up on the table, she can stand there and play with the buttons at the same time for several minutes before falling on her tush.





Oh yeah, a day or two after the last post, the "commando crawling" disappeared. Abby is officially an honest to goodness crawler. We give her the run of the basement (that's where the majority of her pictures are taken), so whenever we put her down in a different spot, she doesn't go too far yet. She scopes it out, looks at me to make sure it's ok, and takes a couple steps before sitting down and starting over. She usually goes in a circle like this. It takes me putting her down a few times in the same spot before she's comfortable taking off. Jake, it's time to put the gate back up. I set her down on the floor in the kitchen while I prepare a bottle, but now she's gotten comfortable enough that she's heading towards the basement stairs. The booboo on her forehead in the first picture is from her attempts to stand in the kitchen. Whenever she's crawling around, she always stops to lift her lower half up straight, but since there's nothing below her but ground she can't straighten out. Anyway, Abby was wearing socks, so she was too slippery when she was bent over with her head a couple inches from the floor. She lost her balance and went the rest of the way forward.

OH, I almost forgot. One day last week, Abby was playing on her LeapFrog deal, and she had a rattle in one had while she was doing her usual attempts to stand. Well, she actually managed to straighten out her upper half without holding onto anything! She only lasted a second before she collapsed, but still.

Crawling

Abby is really moving now! When she started really crawling a couple of weeks ago, she'd only go so far before switching to belly crawling. Now, she's all about the real crawling on all fours. She reminds me of a bulldog because she turns her hands in slightly when crawling. She's trying so hard to climb too. She's always trying to climb on top of us when we're on the floor with her, but she can't quite make it yet. Someday soon I will make another video.

Rita, we're putting the blanket away because she's never on it anymore. It was good to control the spit-up while it lasted, but it no longer works.
















She loves to climb on top of her "Leap Frog Learning Table." That's one of her favorite toys because she can bang on it and it lights up and plays different sounds.

7 Months

I've decided that this is the perfect age, and Abby can just quit growing now, thankyouverymuch. She is so much fun these days. She loves to roll around on the floor to play, and she constantly amazes us with her acrobatics. She will happily play by herself for a while, as long as we are close by to pay attention to her when she so chooses. She comes to us now. She will scoot away with a toy for a while, but she always comes back to see what we're doing. She uses our bodies to pull herself up to standing, though she hasn't figured out how to straighten her torso yet.

Abby is full-on crawling now too. She only goes a few feet before collapsing onto her belly, and she's gotten really good at "commando crawling" on her belly. Since she started sitting up on her own a few weeks ago, I usually bring her to the computer room with me and plop her on the floor with a few toys. Today, she crawled the whole way to me. This far:
I then put her farther back, and she did it again. Between crawling on all fours and belly crawling, she went about 8 feet in one shot.

She's sleeping really well too. Abby typically sleeps from 8-5:30am. I let her play until about 6, and she's perfectly happy with a pacifier and a bear until I go in. She always has such a huge smile for us. She's been taking 2-3 naps about 2.5 hours apart for about a month now, and she's starting to extend her awake time to 2.5-3 hours recently. More often than not, she's still restless after 2.5 hours, and she'll play for awhile before falling asleep. A few times, I've gone in to check on her and she's asleep like this:



It looks like she was sitting up, got tired, and just fell forward to sleep! It looks so uncomfortable, but she's sound asleep. She's such a restless sleeper that she doesn't stay like that for long.

She has 2 teeth in the bottom. The second broke through a day or so after the first. They're still not out far enough to get a picture, but they are getting there. It's much easier to catch a glimpse of them when she smiles now. So far, teething hasn't been the nightmare I feared it would be. We've had a few nights where she woke up screaming and wouldn't settle down for a good hour or two, but not that many.

We weighed and measured Abby last night. She's now to a point where she's no longer growing a ton every month. She was about 28.5 inches long (only a .25 growth from her last doctor's appointment), and 18.5lbs. The length is always iffy when we do it because Abby is so squirmy. We tried a different approach to weighing her this time.

Random Cuteness

Abby's new trick. She does this all the time now when she's up on all fours. Every time I try to take a picture of her up like this, she falls before I can get one. This was the best I could do.