7 1/2 Month Update

Some random facts about Shelby at 7 1/2 months. I am afraid if I don't write these things down, I will forget them!

• She has been giving us some huge smiles lately and absolutely lights up whenever she sees the cat. If she is on the bed or in her high chair, she will look around on the floor for him and smiles and laughs if he is anywhere near her.
• She figured out how to push the button on her press-n-spin top and get the balls inside to bounce around. It might not seem like much, but learning cause and effect is a big milestone.
• She displays preferences for certain toys. She will dig around in her basket of toys until she finds the one she is looking for. Her current favorite toy is not a baby toy at all. It's a clear acrylic paperweight with a drop of Guinness beer encased inside that her grandparents brought us from the Guinness Brewery in Ireland. She loves to chew on it.
• She's getting better with tummy time and rolling, but still prefers sitting up. She will allllmost roll all the way over and just gets stuck on her shoulder until we give her a push. We call it the "99% unassisted roll." However, she will roll all the way over in her crib. Weird.
• She will hold a sippy cup and put the spout in her mouth but doesn't know how to tip it up and get water out. If I tip it up for her, she lets go of the handles.
• We gave her cereal puffs for the first time this week, just to see what she would do with them. She has not quite perfected her "pincer grasp" yet but she will pick them up and get them into her mouth with some effort. She picks them up with her index and middle fingers like chopsticks or - as Scott says - E.T.
• We introduced pears and apples and she hasn't been too crazy about them. Her favorite foods are still butternut squash and sweet potatoes. She also likes peas but I think the latest batch I made was too chunky and she didn't like them as much.
• She woke up a lot at night this weekend and I think it was because it was so dry in the house. My nose and throat was even feeling parched and I can only imagine she was bothered as well. We are running the humidifier and turning the heat down so it doesn't come on as much. She was probably feeling dried out and thirsty! It's natural to think you have to keep the house warm for a baby (since they can't snuggle under down comforters and such) but I read you only need to keep it around 68-70 degrees. I think we were keeping her room too hot, at around 75 degrees. We have a thermometer in there to check.
• The end of Daylight Savings time killed us. She was up extra early. I read online about some things you can do to help babies adjust and will try implementing them this week. You basically have to stretch their nap times and bed times a little later to their normal "clock time" bedtime so they adjust their wake time later. I hope this works and she's not going to be a permanent 5:30 a.m. riser because that's just brutal.
• Knock on wood, do a happy dance and cross your fingers, but she hasn't been sick in almost a month.
• Her two bottom teeth just don't want to pop through. We think we can see two tiny white dots right where they should be but they haven't sprouted yet.

I feel like the next few months are going to be big for milestones - teeth, crawling and pulling up just to name a few. Physically, it seems like she hasn't done much new lately, but you can tell there's lots going on mentally. Scott says you can see the hamster wheel turning when she's concentrating on something like eating a cereal puff or knocking over a stack of blocks. But crawling just in time to get to the Christmas tree... oh dear!