Practicing Our "B" Sound

Elizabeth started blowing rasberries about a month ago and after a few days of rasberries 24/7, she just stopped. But we've been trying hard to get her to say her "b" sound and tonight she totally thought she figured it out. I think she's getting close!

Jack got brave and decided to play with Elizabeth this weekend. She was rolling around with her blanket and he thought he was supposed to grab it. Pretty funny!

7 Months

My baby girl is 7 months old! She's closer to being a one-year old than a newborn. Wow. It's been a very exciting month for Elizabeth.

She's learned to sit up all by herself.

Those silly teeth just won't show up! She's chewing on everything she can get her hands on and still nothing!

She's rolling all over the place. Check out this video.

She loves pretty much all foods. Her favorite is still green beans, followed closely by sweet potatoes and apples.

And she really likes the Baby Mum-Mums rice crackers.

She's very aware of her kitties - and they of her. The kitties are always in the room with us and sometimes Desi gets close enough to get some love. Jack stays a safe distance away.

Since she's sitting so well, we moved to a bigger tub - the ducky tub - where she can sit up and play with her toys. Her new thing is trying to climb out of the side of the ducky tub, so we may not be in this one for long.

She can blow raspberries and "click" her tongue. Still not so much with the consonant sounds, but she makes her vowel sounds very well.

She can get water out of a sippy cup, but doesn't much care for the "taste" of water yet.

She went swimming for the first time at Grandma and Grandpa's house and loved it! She really liked splashing and getting all of our faces wet. I think there will be more swimming adventures in the future.

She's the big girl in her class at school now and will probably be moving to the crawling room soon. It's so funny because when she started she was so much smaller than all the babies in her room, and now she's by far the biggest!

She's very good at passing toys from hand to hand - one of those milestones apparantly.

And perhaps the biggest news (for Mommy and Daddy) is Elizabeth is sleeping through the night! For about the last 2 weeks she goes to bed between 6:30 and 7:00 and stays asleep until at least 6:00 am. It's lovely! And she's such a happy baby when she wakes up. She can play in her crib happily for 10 minutes or more and gets so excited when we walk in to get her.

She's just getting more and more fun every day! How lucky we are to have such a wonderful baby girl!

Elizabeth and Her Kitty

If you don't know Desi, you will think this is really mean. But this cat loves any and all attention. She is purring the whole time, until the end when she leaves. She loves being petted - even Elizabeth's version. And Elizabeth sure loves her kitty!

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day!!! We had a great weekend with our Daddy and all the other Daddies in our lives. Friday, Elizabeth wore this shirt to school to tell all her friends how much she loved her Daddy. And she made him a present - a framed picture of her and her foot prints with a sweet poem about daddies.

Then on Saturday, we got Elizabeth a new toy. Her Daddy commented that she needed more toys to "bang" on because that's what she's all about these days. A quick trip to toys r us and we found - a Sit and Pound Arcade! She loves it!

What a great Daddy!

Pretty blue eyes!

Then on Sunday we first went to Mimi and Pa-Paw's to celebrate Poppa's 84th birthday, as well as father's day. Here's Elizabeth talking to Poppa and Mimi.

And there was singing! Uncle Dennis and Mimi wrote a song for Poppa and performed it for us all. Mimi multi-tasked and fed Elizabeth a bottle at the same time.

Then we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house - and Grandma had toys for Elizabeth to play with - some her Daddy had played with when he was little!

Then Elizabeth went swimming for the first time! I didn't get as many pictures as I wish I had because we were too busy having fun. But Elizabeth loved the water! Even when her Daddy put her face in it!

Hi Grandma - I'm swimmin'!

What a fun weekend. And what a lucky girl to have such a fantastic Daddy and so many other people who lover her. Happy Father's Day!

Visit with the Cardiologist and the Ducky Tub

Last week we went for a 6-month check up with Elizabeth's cardiologist. As you may recall, when she was born, Dr. D. discovered a hart murmur and sent us to Dr. L. the cardiologist to check it out. She had a VSD, a small hole between two of the chambers of her heart - fairly common and often it corrects itself. Sure enough - after an EKG and echocardiogram, we discovered that the VSD is gone! Just as hoped! Elizabeth was such a good girl for it. The EKG didn't take long and she was very interested in the "stickers" the nice lady kept putting on her. The echocardiogram took about 20 minutes, but there was a t.v. with some children's show on (which she had her eyes glued too - we try not to watch t.v. at home when she's up, but she sure loved it!) and she did just fine. Here she is after all that fun waiting on the Dr. to give us the good news. She really does love tissue paper!

Unrelated to the cardiologist, Elizabeth got a new bathtub! She has gotten too big for the infant tub we've had from the beginning and my experiment in the big bathtub was a huge failure. So I had seen this on someone else's blog and ran across it for $14.99 on babiesrus.com. She loves it! It's inflatable and has a sensor for hot/cold and the beak "quacks!" She's always enjoyed bathtime, but she really likes sitting up like a big girl in this one. Plus it doesn't use as much water as it would to fill up the bathtub. And I saw the same one for $11.99 at target tonight.

Fun Weekend with the Big Girl

We had such a fun weekend with Elizabeth! First, Daddy sheared Desi. Elizabeth loves "petting" her kitty, Desi - grabbing fist-fulls of hair and yanking. Desi has so much hair, she doesn't mind, and usually purrs the whole time. However, then Elizabeth has cat hair all over her hands, and right now everything in her hands goes in her mouth. So you see the problem. Luckily, Desi loves being sheared. So we had that adventure.

This was half way through. I got distracted and didn't get a final picture of all the hair. She's basically half the cat she was.

Then, Daddy decided Elizabeth didn't have enough toys - so he brought her a pot and a spoon. It was pretty funny.

Saturday night, Eric and I went out for a date! Maybe the first one since little E has been born. Miss Cait came to babysit and Elizabeth enjoyed playing with her, and then slept the whole time we were gone. We saw the Hangover at a theater that serves food and drinks. It was hilarious and I had 2 martinis! A fun night!

This morning, we took Elizabeth to Mimi's Cafe for breakfast. We've decided to call it "The Cafe" so she doens't get confused with her Mimi. We tried a big girl high chair, and sure enough - it worked! She was so interested in everything and everyone around her. Being in the high chair is a lot more fun than the baby carrier.

I don't know why she is making these funny faces. She was having a good time, but in all the pictures, she looks kind of like a deer in headlights.

At "The Cafe" they bring little people a plate of cheerios, crackers, and oranges when you first sit down to keep them happy. We decided to let E try a cracker. She was pretty intersted, but it was a little hard and pointy for her. I had read about these rice crackers called "Mum Mums" that basically dissolve when the babies gum them, so we went to Wal-Mart (the only place nearby that carriers them) and bought some. She loved them! What a big girl!

Elizabeth's First Boat Ride

Elizabeth had her first boat ride this weekend - and her second too! She really liked it - she loves having wind blowing in her face. She didn't even mind the life jacket (thanks Pa-Paw!).

Mimi's helping us get it on for the first time.



Yay! I like boat rides!

Mommy forgot Elizabeth's hat, so Mimi let us borrow hers.

And then she fell asleep. In the life jacket. Sitting up.

What a fun weekend!

Playing with Daddy

This is pretty dark, but it was so cute!

Elizabeth likes her high chair.

I really didn't walk away and leave her until she fell asleep. She actually fell asleep during bites. I wiped her face, which she slept through and grabbed the camera. Sleepy baby.