Seven-month-old babies lull you in to a false sense of security that having babies is all fun and downright easy. They go to bed on time. They wake up on time. They smile and act cute pretty much all of the time. They still take fairly long naps and when they are awake they'd rather hang out in their Exersaucer or Jumperoo and explore by themselves than have you entertain them all day every day (unlike those much younger and much needier four-month-olds). Their sounds are downright hysterical and they attack everything with gusto. See that water bottle over there? I MUST have it! I will grunt and screech with excitement until it has finally reached my mouth at which point I will get a look on my face like I have conquered the world. They are still trying new foods so at least a few times a week their parents get the excitement of watching their face either wince in disgust or smile with pleasure at something brand new. The problem with all of this is that it makes me think "I want another baby. I want five more babies." At least once a day. I had always wondered how people could let themselves have babies super close together but I'm starting to understand it. How could you not want five of the little monsters after watching one particular monster do the cutest stuff day in and day out? Luckily, I have nephews. I will not be fooled by her cuteness. I understand that this super fun and easy stage will be followed by something horrible like teething, sleep problems and GASP, crawling. In any case, she makes every day the most fun day of my life.
Alert the media, Renee rolled over this month! A little slow to the draw but she came around. Sitting up like a big girl is all the rage at our house right now. She can hold herself there for five or ten minutes...just long enough for me to get convinced that I can wander in to the kitchen for some cheese and crackers until I hear CRASH followed by some wailing. When I leave the room now, I have to worry about whether she'll get her sock off of her foot and in to her mouth fast enough to choke on it before I can get back. 
She's NOSY with a captial N. If she's eating and Ski does so much as coughs she'll stop everything she is doing to turn and find out where the noise came from. I can't walk in to the other room without her jerking her head after me and giving me a look that says "Just where do you think you're going?" I think this is the precursor to the WHY? she'll ask me seven hundred times a day when she's two.
She still LOVES to eat and moans pretty much steady from the second I put her in her high chair until I wash her face off. Speaking of which, she no exception to the rule and hates to have her face washed like every other kid. I have been making baby food like a mad lady. It took one smell of the meat in a jar for me to know that was not for me. It is no wonder kids won't eat anything when they are toddlers when they start out eating chicken out of a jar. No thank-you. So far I've made sweet potatoes, carrots, green beans, butternut squash, avocados, bananas, pears and blueberries and she's gobbled them all up. Pears are the smash hit though. She looks at me like she won the lottery when I give her the first bite of pears. She hates peas. Real or out of a jar, she's not interested. She gets it in her mouth, flares her nostrils and looks at me like, "Seriously lady, what are you trying to do to me?" Then she promptly pushes every last drop back out. I think that it is funny because I don't like peas either. My husband can attest that I pick every last one out of my tuna salad.
I call her Monster most of the time and she still won't say Mama. The only solice is she won't say Dada either. Ha! We pretty much only get Ba. Ba. followed by some high pitched screeching. And once in a while she says "Paaasssst" which sort of sounds like a lisp. She's started hissing like a snake in the past few days so we'll see where that takes us. Daddy still calls her Little One even though she's not all that little anymore. I think he'll be calling her Little One when she moves away to college. She is in the 25th percentile for weight, 50th for height and 75th for head circumference. We got a good chuckle over this. Tall, skinny and has a big head. Her daddy insists that the big head must mean she has a lot of brains. She is a super genius, remember?
I absolutely love how she rubs her eyes and burrows her head in to my neck when she needs a nap. And how she sits and snuggles with me on the couch just after she wakes up. I love how she insists on turning the pages of her books herself and how she now recognizes stories from them. If I say "you're getting SO BIG" she giggles because she knows that it comes from Elmo. Or when I say "the BIGGEST tail of all," her hands start to shake with excitement.
I love how seeing herself in the mirror never ever gets boring and how she attacks each toy in the Exesaucer like it is her mission in life to slobber all over it. I love how a water bottle is much more exciting than any toy in our house and how she brings her blanket (or sleepsack) up to her mouth for a little snuggle before she drifts off to sleep. 
I love how excited she is to see her daddy when he gets home.
And how she rubs her feet together whenever she doesn't have socks on her feet.
I love that her eyelashes are ridiculously long and that she already knows just how to bat them to get her way.
These are all of the things that I never want to forget. Because I can tell by looking at her that she won't be my little baby for long. On that note, with a heavy heart that sighs and thinks "I better enjoy this while it lasts," here is my favorite for this month...my favorite month so far.














