8 Months Old!

Emily is 8 months old today and we can't believe how fast the time has gone! She has grown so fast and is amazing us each day! She's so amazing a malt shop we went to last weekend in Minnesota has already created "Emily's Favorite Malt" which includes hot fudge and butterscotch, Yum!! We continue to tell each other how lucky we are to have such a happy baby!

• Emily weighs 21.2 pounds and is 28.5 inches long. Wearing size 12 month pants and size 9 month tops.
• She is getting very close to crawling. She gets up on her legs and rocks back and forth, and goes backwards, but hasn't figure out how to move her hands at the same time as her legs to go forwards. She has good wrestling potential!
• She eats fruits or veggies at lunch time and dinner, and continues to have 4 bottles per day. Still working on getting her used to the sippy cup.
• She continues to sleep from about 7pm until about 6:30am (except when she has a stuffy nose like this past weekend). She naps for about an hour in the morning and a little longer in the afternoon. She is starting to drop her evening cat nap that is sometimes around 20-30 minutes at about 5pm, sometimes she doesn't take it at all if her earlier naps were longer.
• Continues to suck her thumb when tired and when going to sleep. Hasn't really used a pacifier for several months. She got another cold this week, which made it really hard to suck her thumb since her nose was so stuffed up, which she did not like at all.
• More and more vocal with lots of babbling sounds of bababa, dadada, gagaga, and hmmmmm, eeeeee. Meanwhile, Daddy has progressed to words with two syllables and contractions.
• Loves to read books, bounce in her baby einstein gym, bang toys on the high chair, and play peek-a-boo. She's very ticklish and loves when Daddy kisses her neck.
• Daycare continues to go well, she really likes playing with the other kids and rolling/scooting around on the floor when they are upstairs.

Emily continues to have lots of visitors and to do so great going from person to person. A couple weeks ago Aunt Julia came to visit and Emily was so good for her and let her help with lunch, bath, and diaper time! Then last weekend Megan had some work meetings in Minneapolis on Friday so Tom and Emily came along to hang out at Grandpa Joe and Mary's house. Aunt Rachel came over to visit each day we were there and Emily had a great time playing with all the fun toys at their house! We stopped by to visit Great Grandpa Paul who was so surprised to see how mobile Emily is! Then this weekend for Thanksgiving Tom's family is all coming to visit, including Great Granny Mae! We are excited to host our first Thankgiving Dinner!

Rolls everywhere!

Emily loves bath time and really enjoys splashing in the water even though she gets it in her eyes and mouth. She just startles herself when that happens, looks up at us to make sure everything is ok, smiles, and then goes back to splashing! Here are some fun photos of her after bathtime last night that show her many cute rolls!
The other rolling that we are referring to is Emily's ability to roll to get where ever she wants to go. She has been rolling for awhile, but this new rolling encompasses pivoting, turning her body 90 or 180 degrees around, and analyzing the angle she needs to be at to roll all the way to get something or to avoid obstacles in her way. She isn't crawling yet because I think this rolling technique is enough for her now. She does use her arms to move sometimes but just ends up going backward, which frustrates her.

She is also much more vocal in just the last week or two. She still does her sing-song "ahhhhhhh, eeeeeee" in a very high pitch. And the "hhmmmmmm" a lot. But she has added babababababa and even some d sounds sometimes.

Emily has also added eating solid food at dinner time and opens her mouth for more without any of the coaxing that we did for the first few weeks of solid foods.

It has gotten cold here, so we pulled out the size 12 month winter jacket we got for her. Unfortunately it looked really cute in the store, but until we put it on her we forgot to take into consideration the puffy factor! She barely fits in the car seat with it on!