8 months

Yesterday was Emily's 8 month birthday!!  We had the whole blog ready to go, but then forgot to take her measurements before she went to sleep.  On the months that she doesn't see the doctor, we try to do the measurements ourselves.  Grant and I each measure her and we never get the same thing, so we just try to take an average of our measurements.  So the results we have here could potentially be pretty far off, but it gives us something to go off of :)

-Emily's moving all over the place now!  We have to always make sure there's nothing on the floor that she shouldn't have.  She can go pretty fast and get to pretty much anything she wants.  The other day, I left the room for a minute and she followed me into the next room!  I thought she might get frustrated after a while, but she was very determined to get to me so she just kept going, taking small breaks on her way.  She gets up on her hands and knees and sometimes on her hands and feet, so she wants to crawl for real, but she usually just plops back down if she tries to move her legs.  She's getting there!

These pj pants were a little too big for her so she ended up crawling right out of them :)

-She loves standing up.  If someone sits next to her on the floor, she'll grab their hands and pull herself up.  If we set her back down, she'll do it over and over again.  She can even take some steps if we're holding on to her.  She can't pull herself up on furniture yet, but if we stand her up next to something she can hold on for as long as she wants.

anything technology related is still her favorite toy.  

if you have a floor covered with toys and one remote (or phone or ipad...), 

she will go for the remote 100% of the time

-Emily is LOUD!  Whether it's with her own voice or through other objects, she loves being able to create noise.  She's started using a whining voice a lot!  Sometimes it's because she wants something and is actually whining about it, but sometimes she just likes the way it sounds.  She also likes to bang her toys together or on other things so they make noise.  She thinks it's hilarious.  She uses that as a method to get our attention.  She also likes chewing on her paci or sippy cup to hear the squeaky noise it makes.
-Emily loves her board books (well really any kind of book, we just try to keep the non-board books away so she doesn't rip them).  She can even turn the pages all by herself now!  She also likes to run her hands down the book so it makes a squeaky sound.  Her favorite book is one about animal sounds.  She thinks it's really funny when we make the noises.  She's also fascinated by the hymn books at church, but we try to keep them out of reach :)

I had a cute video to go with this, 

but it's not letting me upload it, 

so it will have to come another time :(

-She's always playing with our necklaces or the buttons on our shirts.  I can't wear dangly earrings anymore :(  Some of the pillows on our couches have big buttons on them and she likes playing with them and chewing on them.  She gets frustrated sometimes, though, because she can't get them off of the pillow.
-We started some finger foods with her last week.  We're mostly just doing puffs for now.  She LOVES them!  She's getting better and better at feeding them to herself.  At first, she would grab them in her fist and then couldn't figure out how to get it into her mouth.  She eventually learned that she could use her other hand to get it out of her fist.  She still does that occasionally, but she's getting better at the pincer grasp, so she can usually do it herself.  She'll eat pretty much anything you put in front of her.  She's a great eater!  She also loves her sippy cup and she does a great job using it on her own.

-Emily is very dainty!  When she wants something or is excited about something she twirls her hands around.  It's something she comes by naturally, because I did the same thing when I was little.  It's adorable!!  Lately, she's also been into crossing her feet.  She does it a lot when she's sitting up or laying on her tummy.  She'll also tap her feet on the ground behind her when she's on her tummy.  It makes her look like she's bored :)

I don't think there's anything more angelic than a sleeping baby

-I think she's falling back into another "stranger danger" phase.  When I threw the baby shower here a few weeks ago, she had a hard time with all of the people.  She was okay at first, and excited to see new people and other babies.  But the more people that came, the more nervous she got, and after awhile she freaked out if I wasn't holding her.  It was funny to see the difference between her and the other babies that have older siblings.  They were so chill!  She'll still go to other people occasionally (most of my family is fine since she knows them well enough by now), but there are times when she gets upset if she's not with me.  I hope this phase doesn't last too long :(

But for the most part, she's just as happy as can be, and we're amazed at how fast she's learning and growing!  How can she already be 8 months old?!

her dimples are becoming more noticeable again :)

love those eyes!

I like this pic because it shows how photogenic Emily is.  

Even from far away, she smiles at the camera!

This month's photoshoot was the most difficult one so far.  She kept wanting to crawl right off of the chair!  And on top of that she was screaming most of the time.  Not crying screaming, but I-like-the-sound-of-my-own-voice screaming :)  Then she discovered how to make herself rock in the rocking chair and she got a huge kick out of it.

see how dainty she is?  what a little lady!

unfortunately, her head was cut off in some of her best pictures :( we were trying so hard to get her attention and make her smile, that we weren't paying close enough attention to the camera

fun videos and spring decor

Our life is about to change!!  Little Em is on the move.  She's been doing a little army crawl for about a week now.  She'll usually lay her head down, lift up her bum, swing her left arm forward and push.  Sometimes she kicks her legs, too, like in this video.  It looks like she's swimming :)  When she started she couldn't get very far, but she's getting faster and better so we don't think it will be long before she's going everywhere!  I guess it's time to babyproof!

The other day Emily couldn't decide which paci she wanted.  She had a purple one attached to the outfit she was wearing and a green one attached to her pjs on the floor next to her.  The video doesn't really do it justice, but she was switching between the two over and over again, without my prompting, for a long time.  I had to help out a little to get her to keep doing it for the video.

This video is from a while back, but it shows what Emily does when she gets excited.  She kicks her legs as fast as she can and makes impatient grunting noises! She does this all the time between bites of baby food!

Emily's been eating so well lately.  She'll eat pretty much anything you give her.  She loves sucking on real fruit through her mesh thing and she really likes getting water.  She'll drink out of our cups, but she also likes being able to do it herself with a sippy cup.  Anyway, she doesn't usually get very messy eating anymore so one day I decided not to use a bib (probably because they all needed to be washed).  This is what happened... (if you can't tell, there are prunes all over her clothes and some on her face). She seemed very proud of herself :)

We've been loving the weather lately.  Emily has really enjoyed spending more time outside and our house is all ready for spring!

I threw a baby shower here last week for a girl in my ward.  It motivated me to FINALLY get the house put together.  We have a few more finishing touches, but hopefully we'll be taking pictures soon so we can post about the finished product!

seven months

Emily is 7 months old today and she's getting more and more fun as time goes on!  She's becoming so social!  She loves people and is always smiling at everyone we come across.  She's also becoming more aware of other babies.  She has a lot of fun when she sees other kids at church.  There's a family in our ward who lives right across the street and they have a baby who's just 2 1/2 weeks older than Emily.  It's the perfect situation, but unfortunately, they're moving to Russia this Summer :(.  We're going to miss them!

Emily's very playful.  We finally got a rug in our living room, so I can just sit her down with some toys and she'll usually be ok for awhile.  She can sit as long as she wants, but now she can also get from sitting to her tummy without just falling over.  She's learning how to get onto all fours and she's very eager to move forward.  She can usually get to things by rolling around and moving sideways, but if something's just barely out of reach right in front of her, she gets really frustrated.

She has 2 teeth now!  She's teething, so she always wants to have something in her mouth.  We have to be careful what we let her play with because we know it will end up in her mouth.  She loves those mesh fruit dispensers and could suck on it forever!  One time I left the room to get her a new outfit and when I came back she had gotten to Grant's shoe and was eating it-- probably not the best choice :).  We also have to be careful about getting ourselves too close to her mouth.  She'll be acting sweet and playful, and then out of nowhere, she'll lunge at us and try to eat our nose!

can you tell which side she was sleeping on in this picture?

She's such a sweetheart!  If we put her close to our face and tell her to give us kisses she'll turn toward our cheek with an open mouth.  Then we say, "aww, thank you," and she smiles really big.  And while I know it's still too early for her to be saying words yet, we really feel likes she's saying "hi" sometimes.  She'll do it when she first sees someone or when a person is across the room and she wants to get their attention.  In that case she usually screams it.  And then she'll say it back to you as many times as you say it to her.  She has a lot of fun with it.

We're finally getting real sleep!!  I had forgotten what it was like to get a full night of uninterrupted sleep.  It was six months after she was born, but even before that I didn't sleep very well toward the end of my pregnancy, so it's really been a while.  It's glorious!!  I'm so happy every morning when I wake up and realize she's still asleep or when she wakes me up in the morning and I realize it's not the middle of the night.  She sleeps on her tummy now, so she can get more comfortable.  It's so fun going to get her out of bed when she wakes up and getting greeted with her cute little face sticking up over the crib (we're going to have to lower her mattress soon!).

Today's photoshoot was a little interesting.  She's been pretty cranky today so we weren't sure if we'd get a good photo at all.  But she was actually in a pretty good mood while we were taking pictures.
However... for most of the pictures we took she was either...

looking anywhere but the camera:

and doing anything but smiling:

Luckily, all it took was a game of peek-a-boo to get some grins out of her!

I know there was an overload of pictures this month, but at least the grandmas will like it :)