7 months old!

How is it even possible that she's 7 months old already!?!?! What freaks me out the most is that she is officially closer to being a year old than she is to being a newborn. Yikes!

As you can see from the pics here....she's standing as often as possible...just loves it! She pulls up on everything and anything from her play table to the couch, chairs, the bed, end tables.... and of course her baby gate. :) The good news is that she is having a lot less spills. And when she does I give her a homeopathic Arnica tablet (they dissolve on contact) and so far, she's not having any more bruises! Yay.

She still has no teeth.

That said, she sure does continue to act as though they might be poking through at any moment. She drops drool bombs often, chews on stuff all the time, and is generally cranky.

Despite what this picture shows...

She does smile a lot too. :) But she has not been sleeping very well either. She has been waking a lot, taking a long time to go down in general, and being well... testy. I think that she might also she having a growth spurt. Everywhere we go people are commenting on how big she suddenly is...or how fat she suddenly is. Growing is by all means good... but, man... is it trying for mamma! So yeah, between the possibility of teeth and growing extra hard, we've had one cranky, needy baby on our hands. But it's all ok. This is just a phase, and it too shall pass. I'm her mamma and I just need to love her and be there for her, and help her through it. :)

Ah, and she continues to crawl like a pro!
Action shots...

(Did you notice that in the first picture she's nearly crying because she was mad at me for picking her up and putting her away from me- but then she spotted the camera/camera strap, and took off all smiles trying to get it!)

I never get bored watching Beni learn and grow. She is very inquisitive- which means she gets into everything (tries to anyway)...but it also means that she often pauses and looks so very seriously at something. Sometimes it's the tv, sometimes it's her hand, sometimes a toy, sometimes something off in space that I can't pick out.

She's gorgeous when she's thinking...

(Also, I muss her hair on purpose all the time because if it's tidy and laying down flat, you can't even see it- so I give it some crazy volume, and bam, she's got hair!) :)

Walking and talking, eating and reading...

Seems like it was time for a new post. So I thought I would let you know what Beni is up to these days. She's crawling. Her form is not perfect, but, she gets around no problem. She is still going between crawling on her knees to sometimes getting her feet involved, which then hinders progress. She's having no issues moving her arms along these days though. So good for her.

Then a few days after she started crawling, she also started pulling herself up on everything! She started by doing it on mine and Joel's legs when we were laying on our sides on the floor with her. And then she started pulling up on her play table- and then she did the baby gate. So, as if she wasn't falling over and banging her head enough just from getting wobbly when sitting, she is now also falling over from standing, which of course is way worse, because it's a longer way to fall! Here she is standing at her gate:






Oh and walking- as I mentioned in the title...she did actually use her play table as a walker the other day, and pushed it forward while taking a few steps. So, she's sort of already taken her first independent, but, of course, supported, steps. Yikes!

She is talking up a storm these days, though not putting out any discernible noises. She laughs at me when I go, "Mmmammmmaammmmmaaaa!" She seems to think it's some kind of joke. Ah well. In any case, it's fun to hear her babble away, and all the different noises that she does make, from blowing raspberries to screeching and everything in between.

She's had a few new tastes of some foods...

She likes to suck the life out of pickles and gum on them too
(much to Joel's chagrin, because he hates pickles and wanted her to hate them too)

She really enjoys brown rice cakes

And she finally decided she loves avocado. :)

Oh, and she's not reading yet... I just wrote that for Jem. :)