Catching up

As you might have noticed from the last post, Adi & Mae are 'playing' together a little more. They smile at each other now, and try to grab each other's hands, feet, hair and especially toys. Its amazing how much more interesting a toy is when someone else is holding it! And now that they're getting mobile enough to get to each other, I'm spending more and more time pulling one away from the other. "No, Adi is playing with that... No, don't roll over your sister... No, don't scratch her face... Gentle..."

Adi has (finally!) started to roll. Both tummy-to-back and back-to-tummy, although she still gets stuck sometimes. She's reaching for toys and I know she can roll either direction from her back. She slept on her stomach last night for the first time that we know of and didn't get scared or stuck or anything.

And Mae doesn't want to get left behind as Adi picks up "her" skill- so she laughed out loud yesterday for the first time. My mom was tickling her with a stuffed animal and her usual excited breath/snorting gave way to a tinkling laugh. It was so neat to hear what her laugh sounds like- different from Adi's, but beautiful- and of course hearing a baby laugh just makes you laugh.


It's been so interesting to see them develop in different ways-- Adi with laughing and babbling, Mae with rolling-- and now to see them pick up the other skills. And in a few weeks, I'm sure I will report some crawling: Mae is pushing up to her hands and knees and rocking back and forth, and yesterday she went from sitting to hands and knees 3 times while my parents were watching her. And with the ease that Adi has shown with rolling (Mae worked and worked at it, Adi makes it look easy) she'll probably be close behind. Yep, we're looking for gates!

Playing together

Where'd my sock go?


Not fair: hers don't come off!

So Big! Mae at 7 months

You know the game where you hold the baby's hands and ask "How big is (baby's name)" and then hold their hands up high, saying "Soooo big!". Well, Meredith knows it too:

A few weeks ago she just started sticking her hands up- or out, at first (so wide!- even more true). Now she does it spontaneously when she wants to play, or when anyone says "How big is Meredith" or "How big is Adeline" or "How big are Daddy's muscles." Just in the last two days, she also started to bring her hands together when we say the patty-cake rhyme, and has quickly become fond of banging two toys together.

Some of her play with toys is now 'metaplay'; instead of just sucking on/looking at the toys, she likes to throw them on the ground or take them out of the box. She still appreciates the finer culinary details of her teething rings and photo albums- we've watched her chew on a toy, get ready to drop it, reconsider and chew on it more several times. But most of the time in her high chair, the toys are tasted and then promptly dropped. Then she bangs on her tray for a new one. (Or to amuse herself?)

Mae likes rhythmic motions a lot. She turns her head back and forth rapidly before falling asleep and, when lying on her back, pounds the floor with one or both hands. One of the cutest ramifications of this occurs when we go in to get her after a nap in the pack-n-play: she is usually on her stomach and she looks up and wags her head back and forth with a huge grin.

Smiles are very common from Mae- especially to strangers. When we go out with her in the stroller or back pack, she attracts a lot of attention because she smiles and coos at anyone she can make eye contact with. I think her dark, defined eyebrows (I swear I'm not penciling them in!) help to make her expressions even more dramatic. She's not smiling here, but see what I mean:She's started blowing raspberries and when she's fussing, doing it to her is one of the few things that might quiet her down. Singing has lost its magic- in fact, I think she just complains louder. She's still screaming, piercingly, to get our attention. (This is really a pain because Adi startles at loud noises and erupts into crying, which makes Mae scream more, which makes Adi cry again,... if you have a suggestion on how to teach a 7-month old not to scream, please tell me!)

Sitting is old hat, now, although she hasn't figured out how to get in or out of the position. As far as eating, she's not very picky- sometimes a bite of pure peas will make her gag but for the most part she plows through her solids, with distinct "mmm's" after each bite. She's had a slight rash off and on for a few weeks now, which I was worried was caused by oatmeal, so we went back to a more simple diet. But I'm not sure it helped, and I'm so impatient to introduce more foods. Her skin is very fair and she flushes easily so I'm not sure if the rash is real or just from being warm or something. Her cheeks are often bright pink from sleeping on her face during naps. (After she learned to roll, she quickly started sleeping on her stomach. I guess it must be nice to have a choice after so long of being stuck on one's back!)

But her main development is rolling. She gets all over and is pushing back onto her knees a little bit, too. She rolls around the living room, rotating when necessary, and can get about anywhere. She likes the base of the exersaucer and the pink box under the end table:

will grab the sling or ergo or folded-up toy gym from under the couch:



and likes to pick through the laundry and play underneath the swing:



It's so much fun to watch her go after something, rolling one way, trying the other way, rotating and trying it again.



Well, as of yesterday we have a new "biggest" milestone: a tooth! Her lower right one is poking through. She had been a bit fussy the past few days but we've thought that for the last 5 months, so I'm not going to claim that was why.