7 Month Milestone

Astrid turns 7 months old today. I know I say it every month but I can't believe 7 months has gone by already! Astrid is developing and getting more of a personality everyday.

This month has definitely been the month of TEETH. Four new teeth to be exact. Astrid now has a total of 6 teeth, which means we have 14 more to go (for 20 baby teeth).

Another new development is Astrid can now support some of her weight on her legs, and loves to stand with support and bounce in her Jumperoo. This means she can stand in her Ultrasaucer and Jumperoo for much longer periods of time.

She's now starting to sit up on her own unsupported as well. She loves to sit up in her stroller and wherever I set her down. I still have to stay closeby because when she sees something she wants she'll pivot and reach out to grab it, and over she goes. Sometimes she just wants to be close to me and now that she can sit up she can sit next to me and play with her toys for short stretches of time (until she gets bored and wants more of my attention).

At a few months old she would stare at her hands as if they were the most fascinating things to look at. Now that fascination has transferred to my hands and Uwe's hands. Not only does she want to look at them, but she wants to grab them, pull, twist, put them in her mouth. And for some reason she's also really interested in my feet. If she spots them she'll do everything she can to grab them. (Maybe it's the red nail polish?) Once she was lying on her belly in the opposite direction and out of the corner of her eye she spotted my feet, so she used her arms to swivel around 180 degrees just so she could touch my feet. (In the above photo you can see she's happy as a clam with a vice grip on my foot.)

Astrid is also much more active now. Even though she's technically not crawling yet (since she has yet to coordinate her leg movements) she does a commando crawl where she uses her arms to drag her body for little spurts. She's also gotten really good at flipping from her belly to her back and twisting and rolling around to get where she wants. If I take my eyes off her for 5 minutes she's out the door, or across the room. I've started to put up barriers so that she can't get at things like electronic equipment, chords, and especially the tablecloth covering the coffee table which she loves to pull (this is dangerous because everything on the table can come crashing down on her head). And she loves swimming. The Mommy and Me swim classes twice a week (3 times this week) is such great exercise for her and really tires her out. Afterwards she always has a great nap.

She also now recognizes the tone of my voice when she's about to do something that she's not supposed to. She'll pause and look at me and smile. Little charmer knows how to melt Mommy's heart (and Daddy's too!). A nice bath in the evening at the end of a long day.

I told Uwe this would have made a great photo if he wasn't wearing just one sock. He said Astrid pulled it off when he was playing with her earlier. She couldn't do that at 6 months!

I was just looking back at some photos of Astrid and she already looks so different from 2 and 3 months ago. I'm so glad that I started this blog to document everyday of her life. I only wish I had started sooner!