Month 7

The 7 month old “girler” — she’s all grown up!

Today I discovered a tooth! Ariel’s bottom incisor is coming in, just a little bit, but enough to make her a little more sensitive today.

In other developments: After 4 consecutive days of hanging out in the YMCA’s child watch without crying, I can officially say that she is now ok with staying with strangers. I feel a bit like the helicopter mom as I lurk outside the child watch window, sure that Ariel will freak out any moment, but she only did on the first day that I put her there last week. Since then she even seems reluctant to leave. She craves the social stimulation of other tots running around.

Baby-proofing has kept Brian super busy! Yesterday he spent all day mounting our television to the wall, hiding cords, and putting half our living room furniture into storage. Now Ariel has the run of the living room on the yoga and activity mats., which comes just in time because she is doing what I call her “raring bull” movements, which must be the immediate precursor to full on crawling then standing. She scoots and rolls far fast, so we are on the alert!

“The crib has come”! But Ariel is not yet sleeping there. So far it remains vacant in the front bedroom while A still shares the bed with mommy. It makes sense, considering that she is up every 1-3 hours (usually about 2 hours) for nursing. I KNOW, half of everyone with an opinion says I have to cut out the nighttime nursing now that she’s 7 months. But it’s still just so natural and easy to nurse her to sleep and back to sleep again when she awakens. I have not yet started the “sleep training” week of hell. So…. The crib remains empty so far!

What else about 7 months? Well, A is more of an angel all the time. I think neither B nor I could have imagined she’d be so … extremely lovable. Of course you expect (hope really) to love your child, but this is getting ridiculous. I mean, we both honestly believe she is the CUTEST baby in the world. How did we get so blessed?

Today she made another step towards standing up and crawling. She is getting close! We are scared for her safety so we are hoping to get her to sleep in a crib soon.