Seven

Oh my, what have we gotten ourselves into? Well, if you ask Autumn that question, the response should be nothing short of, "everything!" Seriously, how do babies learn and change so quickly? About a week ago, Autumn made the transition from army crawling (with one or two "real crawls" in there from time to time), to full-on crawling with some lazy army crawls every once in a while. A few days ago she randomly started pulling herself to standing from a sitting position. Within a day of that she was cruising around the outside of the exersaucer, walking around by herself and only wanting to play with the toys from her new perspective. Yesterday she learned how to sit herself up from a crawling position, and this morning we panicked when we could hear her yelling in her room (at 5:45am, mind you) but she was nowhere to be found on her video baby monitor. When I went in there she was standing up in the corner of her crib (sleep sack and all!), out of the baby monitor's line of sight. Turns out she was probably yelling because she couldn't figure out how to get herself back down.

For my own sake and quick reference later on, here's the tried-and-true list version of what's going on with Autumn at seven months:

--She's on her second bad ear infection in the past six weeks (major bummer!). It's in the same ear, and just as with the last one, we only knew because the pediatrician had us bring her in to check her lungs today (she's had a gross cough), and they found the infection instead. She hasn't been fussy or had trouble sleeping, so even her doctor was really surprised to find it. We're all hoping it was just an unlucky winter/spring cold season, but there could be a visit to an ear-nose-throat specialist on our horizon.
--Weighs 18 pounds
--As described above, crawling at about 95% proficiency. It's so much more fun picking her up from daycare now, because wherever she is when we walk in, she's hears our voice, gets a huge smile on her face and immediately crawls her fastest to get to us. So sweet.
--Pulling herself to stand, and cruising around if she's holding on to something at the right level
--Sitting up from a crawling position
--Loving eating, as always. She's tried lots of veggies (favorites are sweet potatoes and carrots, but apparently loves spinach at daycare) and some fruits. She also loves oatmeal mixed with some pumpkin.
--Wearing size 3 diapers and mostly 6-9 or 9 month clothes. Still fits in some 6 month, and up to 6-12.
--Taking 2-3 naps a day. She really needs three, but has been skipping the last one of the day, and totally crashing by 6pm. This results in a pre-6am wake-up call for us, which is (sort of) okay on weekdays, but completely unacceptable on weekends, and all days during summer vacation.
--Developing better fine motor skills. Finding her paci and putting it in her mouth the right way is way easy these days. She also has this "crawl n' cruise" jungle toy that has this spiral slide thing you can put balls in and watch them go around and come out at the bottom. She recently figured out how to put the balls in the right place, and loves watching them go around and around. While we're talking about balls, she also likes to take a ball in each hand and bang them together. So, would we call her a ball buster? Inappropriate, sorry.
--I might be crazy, but I swear I think she's trying to play her own interactive games with us. Today at the doctor's she had a squishy ball she was playing with (I promise we give her things besides balls to play with). She put it up to my mouth, so I grabbed it with my teeth and she giggled hysterically. Then she took it out of my mouth and put it in hers. When I put it back in mine she giggled again...and again, and again.
--Getting funner (yes, funner) by the day! I really can't wait for summer, the weekends are just not enough time with this little monkey.

UPDATE: So, I wrote this and took the pictures in a panic on her actual 7 month birthday -- I really wanted it to be on time for once! Hence the light pink sweatsuit, which is a color that isn't even in my top 1,000. I was frantically shooting the pics before she got too cranky, so I didn't want to bother with changing her into something presentable (sorry Autumn). Then Brian came in and asked, "why are you in such a rush, it's not the 12th!" Without question I put away the camera, only to realize after she'd gone to bed that I had been right all along. So then I decided to upload everything onto Blogspot to post this on time, and, go figure, the site was down for maintenance. Blah. Here's the pics!

This thing is for standing, right?

Almost up


Yay!


Look at that bruise on my head. First of many standing casualties.

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This "toy" is from Abigail's Exersaucer, but I'm not allowed to play with it on there anymore because I'm too rough. This way is much more fun anyway, hope Abigail doesn't mind!