seven months already.

my, how the time does fly.

on sunday when i was taking her 7 month pictures (soon to follow), she crawled over to her exersaucer and pulled up on the thing. that crazy girl! she pulled herself up and started playing with the toys on it. today, she did the same thing, and was walking around it to get to different toys. this kid is not going to stay on the ground for very long.

i made some more baby food today...peas and apricots. she had some peas tonight and that seemed to go over fairly well...we'll try the apricots next week and see how that goes.

i'm so excited about christmas, and perhaps even more excited that today was derek's last day of work until january 5. it will be fabulous to have him at home for a while. i need the company. things can get overwhelming at times, and it will be a much-needed break for my full-time mothering all day long.

we bought charis a snow suit this weekend and are anxiously awaiting the snow required for her to wear it. can't wait to see what she thinks of that. there will definitely be video.

so merry christmas to everyone! i'll try and post early next week, but we'll be out of town over the weekend so don't be too anxious for those first christmas pictures!!

ch-ch-ch-changes!

so yesterday, i was wrapping christmas presents. charis saw all that crinkly paper from across the room and apparently was interested enough that she finally pushed past all that rocking and belly flopping and actually crawled! she came right over and grabbed some scraps to munch on. so now our little girl is officially crawling....time to baby proof! we are frantically trying to find baby gates that fit our needs and discussing what things we have to put in storage for safety's sake. we already made a few changes after thanksgiving in anticipation of her crawling, but we definitely have a lot left to do. my sister-in-law just laughs at me because our house is about the least baby-proof there is...she always had such a hard time bringing her kids here becuase there was so much for them to hurt themselves on, and for them to break :) so apparently we're getting our fair due :)

this morning charis modeled for evenflo for the 2nd time...both photo shoots were for packaging images for snugli carriers. both of her shoots will be on boxes for products that come out in june. derek also modeled this morning, but he had a four-week old baby in his snugli, and the four-week-old baby's mom had charis... charis did well, but refused to smile this time. oh well! the nice thing about those shoots is that they shoot a portrait for us afterwards, and since derek was there as well, we were able to do a family photo. they'll send us a disc with the images we selected in a month or two, and i'll post it then. it was our first official family photo!

this afternoon, i discovered that charis' top right tooth finally broke through! we've been waiting for weeks for this to happen, and finally that stubborn little tooth has decided to cooperate. i'm nervous about how this will affect nursing, but i am glad that i'm plugged in to our local LLL chapter and can get some help if i need it.

she's still not eating much in the way of solids, but we keep working at it every day...last night she slept 7 hours straight, which gave us some much-needed sleep. a nice reprise from her habit of being awake every 2 hours. i'm hoping that her habit is about to be broken, because i am in serious need of real sleep, and i think derek is too.

on sunday, charis will be 7 months old! we can't believe how big she is getting and how she is turning into a little girl :)

looks like mayonnaise...

so. a funny anecdote from this evening.

we were visiting with some friends we haven't seen in a while, and they invited us to stay for dinner. they had some honebaked ham they were planning to have for sandwiches, so there was plenty to share. i made mine with one side mayo, one side dijon...some lettuce...no cheese, of course.

it was a casual thing, we just made sandwiches and sat in the family room while charis played on the floor in front of us. i sat down to start eating, and as i had a bite of my sandwich, charis fussed enough that i thought i should pick her up and try to hold her while i ate.

so i picked her up and she thrashed around in my arms a bit before settling down.

"you have something on your chin," offered derek.

"oh," i thought to myself, "i thought i felt something wettish on my chin...let's just see, shall we?"

so i wiped the palm of my hand on my chin and looked at what was there. "oh," i thought, "it's mayonnaise...i must have gotten some on me when i took that bite of sandwich." so i licked it off my hand.

but oh. no. that's not mayonnaise at all. that has a strange sour taste, and...

"ew!" i spit it back out.

somehow, charis had managed to plant a glob of cheesey spit-up on my chin. but it wasn't on my chin anymore.

and now that i have you all grossed out, allow me to share some photos from last night...derek and i went to "the winds cafe" in yellow springs for an anniversary dinner. it was our 5th anniversary yesterday and we had a lovely dinner.

sign of the times.

so this morning, i had charis in her high chair and was feeding her some rice cereal mixed with pears... (mixing with pears is the only way she'll eat it) so she ate a couple bites, then started kind of yelling at me and wouldn't eat any more... i was just kind of looking at her, trying to figure out what she wanted, when i looked at her hands, stretched out at her sides. they were squeezing into fists and releasing repeatedly...

now, this is the ASL sign for "milk"...but even though we've been signing with her for a couple months (and not always consistently), i had never seen her doing anything resembling signing back at me...in fact, i was starting to wonder if i would even recognize when she signed back to me.

so this morning, she's doing the fist thing, and it occurs to me, "maybe she's asking for milk?" so i sign back to her and say "charis, do you want some milk?" she immediately stopped being mad, smiled, and flapped her arms in excitement.

holy cow, the kid was telling me she wanted milk!!!

i can't wait for the next sign she chooses to use!