This is what happens when Genevieve gets a little over-enthusiastic during dinner…  Notice – we had stripped her down to prevent a disaster since cherries can be messy.  David wasn’t so lucky.

Somehow She’s Clean!

In other news, we’ve been letting her practice her fine-motor skills after dinner by giving her these puffs.  She does a really good job with them!  This time she didn’t quite hit the mark, though.

Now just move the tongue back into your mouth…

Seventh Month

We are rolling right along through her first year.  We only have five months until her first birthday, which blows my mind.  Look at how long she is in our family picture!  She is getting so big and is already so very intelligent.  [Smartest kid there ever was!]  Heehee!  It’s amazing just how many changes happen in the first year.  Every month I think to myself that she couldn’t change any faster than she already is, and then it happens.  Here’s what happened in the last month:

• Genevieve’s sitting skills are definitely improving.  We still monitor her closely when she is sitting on the concrete, but if we are inside or on the grass, we don’t worry about it.  Yes, she will topple over, but the topples are getting to be a little more controlled.  She still can’t sit herself up yet, but she’s definitely gaining the strength to do that.  These sitting skills have helped her begin the transition from her Bumbo to the highchair.  She’s not 100% sure what to do with all that freedom of movement in the highchair, but she’s beginning to like it.  She likes to turn around and watch what’s going on behind her while she’s in it; she couldn’t do that in the Bumbo.
• She still isn’t crawling, but she can roll from one end of the living room to the other in a surprisingly short amount of time.  She can also pivot on her stomach, and she’s starting to move herself backwards.  Forward movement isn’t too far behind at this point!
• She got to try a host of new foods this month.  Her new favorite happens to be blueberries.  I pureed a bunch of them and added them to her oatmeal.  You’ve never seen such a happy baby!  She eats them faster than anything else now, but that often means we have to strip off her clothes before feeding her.  She dive-bombs the spoon, and that can lead to some pretty messy situations.  Here’s her “I love blueberries” face.

Blueberries!

• Another big achievement: she has enough hair to *kind of* have bed head in the morning.  So cute!  :-)  (For the record: I adore her bald little head.)
• She and Cooper are starting to interact a lot more, which is hilarious.  The other day, Cooper casually brought the rope over to Genevieve and did her signature move: she waved the rope in front of Genevieve as if to say, “Look what I have! I bet you can’t get it! Neener neener!”  [Yep - I am sure I've translated the dog language correctly there.]  Genevieve thought that was hilarious and started giggling.  Cooper is a lot more interested in Genevieve now that she’s starting to be more interactive.  It’s so cute.  In the morning after Genevieve’s first nap, I help Genevieve chase Cooper around the game room.  The two of them really get into it.  It’s great!
• Speaking of interaction, Genevieve is beginning to imitate us a lot more now.  David entertains her by tapping on whatever surface is nearest to him, and I caught Genevieve tapping back the other day.  How cool is that?  She also stares at me when I suck on my tongue (for her enjoyment), and then she sucks her tongue.
• She thoroughly enjoys our walks.  She is able to stay awake a little better now, but that could be because I usually take us out as soon as she wakes up from a nap.  I learned that falling asleep in her stroller equals a horrible nap, so I try to avoid that.  Cooper is loving the fact that we’re going out more often now, and we have an awesome park that we go to!  I’ll be posting pictures from one of our walks soon.
• At this point, she is not a fan of the nursery at church.  Unfortunately for her and everyone within earshot, the time we drop her off usually coincides with the exact time she should be laying down to take a nap, so the poor nursery workers have to see the worst side of her.  They assure me that they know she’s a sweet little girl the majority of the time.  :-)  To take a nap, I always read her a book, give her a few kisses, lay her down in her crib, and say “See you in a bit.”  She usually cries for a few minutes and then goes to sleep.  Unfortunately, this is a little harder to do in a room FULL of talkative babies.  She’ll learn to love the time with her friends!
• We don’t feel any teeth yet.  I’m loving my little miss smooth gums.  Her crooked, toothless grin is contagious!

Genevieve really is one of the happiest babies I have encountered.  She can play by herself on the floor for quite a while (sometimes up to an hour), and she easily smiles for people around her.  Any time we go out somewhere, people talk to her.  Sometimes it’s a little confusing when I hear someone talking in my direction behind me, and then I realize Genevieve is smiling [and sometimes giggling!] over my shoulder at a complete stranger.  She’s still a little shy, but overall she’ll hand out smiles right and left.  I love it!  We have such a sweet little girl.

*In case you read this one before the Fifth Month post, just know that I am using the information I posted on Facebook so that I have it on here for the sixth month.  I will do a more comprehensive lit for the seven month collage!

Sixth Month

I’m so proud of our little girl! We went to the doctor, and she is as healthy as can be. She’s 16 pounds, 2 ounces (50th percentile), and 27 inches long (90th percentile!!!). I have a feeling she’s going to be tall.

• After trying rice cereal in the previous month, we got to move on to new foods, and I LOVE showing her new things! Rather than rice cereal (which doesn’t 100% agree with her), I started making her oatmeal. She loved it even more with a little cinnamon mixed in. She’s now tried sweet potato with cinnamon, zucchini with oregano, sweet peas, butternut squash with cinnamon, avocado, and pears with allspice. Somehow I birthed a child who doesn’t like avocado; I hope that changes over time. I think her favorite thing so far is sweet potato, though she’s enthusiastic about everything we give her (minus the avocado).
• We found out she loves lime popsicles. Evidently I’ll have to share that particular treat from now on. For the past six years, I had that dessert aaaall to myself. I thought she would make a funny face when I gave her a lick. I was WRONG! She reached for more until that popsicle was gone.
• She is now rolling easily from back to tummy and back again. It’s crazy! She’s beginning to sit up unassisted, though that’s not 100% yet. I’ve noticed that frustration sets in if she sees something she wants, so I have a feeling crawling won’t be that far away. *Gasp!!* Can we slow things down a bit?
• She is now sleeping through the night from 8 to 7:15. It’s wonderful! She takes a few short naps a day and is overall a happier little girl with more sleep. (I happen to be a happier Mom now that I’m getting some decent sleep, too!)
• She tries to help us turn the pages when we read to her, which I love.
• She likes to be outside, and I let her investigate the flowers in our front yard. She stares at our rosebushes. (I’m a little more careful about that line of investigation. I have some rosebush scars myself.)
• She is pretty good about not yanking Cooper’s hair, though we’re working on that one.

I can’t believe she is already half a year old!

Well, I’m a little behind on posting these on the blog.  Since my OCDness won’t allow me to post the seventh-month collage without first posting the fifth- and sixth-month collages, I’m going to use the information that I posted on Facebook for the two of them and do something a little more comprehensive for the seventh.

Fifth Month

It seems like there were a lot of changes in this month!

• She rolled over for the first time. That was so exciting! I sat there watching her on the play mat and thought to myself, “Maybe I should be video-ing this,” and a few seconds later (when I didn’t have my camera) she rolled over.
• She also went through the four-month sleep regression. Hmm…not fun. She enjoyed my presence every hour to hour-and-a-half every. single. night.
• We also found out she had a dairy allergy during this month. Poor thing. Once I cut dairy products out of my diet, all was well.
• Genevieve got to try rice cereal for the first time! She had been obsessively watching us while we ate our dinner every night, and we knew it was time. She took to it immediately. She knew what to do with the spoon and started swallowing bites as soon as we gave them to her. Yay!
• She started to enjoy her stroller a lot more during this month. We go for walks with Cooper, and she enjoys looking at everything. Quite often our walks put her to sleep.

This is one of the photos from Genevieve’s six-month shoot.

Funny Faces

Yep.  Couldn’t resist.  :-)

I mentioned in a previous post that Genevieve enjoys my lime popsicles, and she was so cute helping me eat mine tonight that I had to show you:

That little tongue is hilarious!  You can tell she’s pretty serious about helping me.  Genevieve now knows what that white bar is, too.  I tried eating one the other night after dinner while she was on the floor, and she immediately noticed and wanted me to hold her.  Also, if you notice her arms in the video, that is how she usually eats – with her arms thrown back.  It’s seriously convenient for me because it means things get a lot less messy.  She occasionally tries to grab at whatever I’m feeding her, but it’s not very common.

While Genevieve and I were at her six-month appointment, the pediatrician said that we could start letting her try sippy cups so she could get used to them.  She’s still trying to figure it out, but her “after sip” look is so super cute!

Showing Off That Tongue!

She still uses her cup for a chew toy more than a drinking apparatus, but she’s learning!  When she does take a sip, it usually goes straight down her shirt which leads to totally soaked clothing.  She’ll eventually learn.  :-)

One of my favorite things to do is watch Genevieve and her Daddy play together.  I walked into our bedroom the other day and found this:

Peek-a-Boo

So cute!  Her Daddy was popping up from the side of the bed, and she couldn’t stop giggling.  It was so much fun!  After this, he and Genevieve started talking, but she was more interested in examining his face.

Foot-Exam

She thinks David’s whiskers are funny.  We discovered it when she would kiss his week-old beard.  She would kiss him and then pull back and giggle.  Now she giggles whenever she touches it.  This was how she reacted at lunch today:

I love everything about these two!