8.5 months!

Where to begin?! Here we go again with a long blog post. I have a lot to document. I mostly do this so I can look back and remember what Emma was doing at different stages because she's growing up so quickly! Here are a couple of Picasa albums from the last month.
Grandma and Grandpa Harris album
Connecticut and the Hamptons album
And since I know you guys are really here for the photos, here are a few new favorites!

Emma likes wearing my headband. She usually does her cute smile when I put it on her. 

I think that she knows that she looks cute :-)

I have very few photos (if any) of her upset. I love this photo!

Emma is truly happy when she is pulling my hair. I think it's soothing to her and if nothing else she can pull herself in close to me. Usually when she pulls my hair, she's trying to pull me close so that she can give me her slobbery kisses. I LOVE this! I figure I need at least one photo to remember this.

Totally out of focus. But really, could she be any cuter in her bathing suit?!

Emma is about 8.5 months old. I can't even begin to express how much I love this little girl. I feel like my heart has grown at least twice its size. I haven't figured out what age I like best. It truly just gets better and better. Seeing her sweet personality makes me one happy mama. I love watching her develop and do new things. Every week she seems to be conquering new skills.

I think one of the biggest milestones yet was when she first started to smile. Now when we get her belly laughs, it warms my heart like nothing else can. In the last few weeks, she crawls up to us and puts her arms out for us to pick her up. I love that too.

Toothies, as we like to call them! At the end of August  (so just over 7 months old) she got her third tooth. The upper left tooth (not the center one surprisingly). We figured her third tooth would have come sooner, given that her first two bottom teeth came in at 4.5 months. Around 8 months, the two upper center teeth and then the upper right tooth came in. So now she has 6 teeth from what we can tell. I'm not daring enough to fully stick my fingers in to feel since those teeth are sharp! Still just two on the bottom, which are very prominent. Very cute!

Emma has been cruising for a couple of weeks. She's a very strong stander, although she doesn't like standing without holding on to something for support. Grandma and Grandpa Harris were in town last weekend and witnessed her standing by herself for the first time. It was a complete accident. She grabbed a toy off her playmat while she was standing and probably didn't realize that it was no longer attached to the playmat :-) She stood for several seconds! She did this one more time over the weekend while holding on to Steve's shoelace.

It was so fun having Grandma and Grandpa Harris in town to play with Emma a couple of weeks ago. I know she just loved it! We spent a long weekend with them. Emma showed them how she likes to eat ribs at Corky's with the dry rub of course ;-) She showed them how she loves to swing and go down slides at the playground behind Houston High School. We also spent some time driving around town and by the hospitals where Steve works, then we walked around U of Memphis's campus. It was such a lovely weekend!

Even more recently, Emma ventured on a plane for the first time. I was dreading the plane ride up to Laguardia, thinking that she would likely cry for the whole 2+ hour flight. We splurged and got the direct flight. It was worth every penny not having to get on multiple planes.  To my amazement, she did great, especially on the journey up to NY, which was in the afternoon. On the way home, the flight was in the evening and she was tired, so she was a bit fussier./squirmier. Luckily she slept the last part of the flight.  The good Lord was looking after us since the girl sitting next to us was a nanny for twin girls that are 15months old and said she would easily be able to tune Emma out even if she cried the whole time. What a sigh of relief!  I honestly have no idea how people travel with a kid and have no assistance. The luggage and bags were out of control. Even after careful planning, it was a lot of work. I wouldn't have been able to carry everything without a second set of hands. I'm not sure what I would have done without my mom's help on the flight up to NY last Wednesday. Steve was a trooper on the flight back to Memphis and held Emma most of the time since he had the window seat. I was hesitant to hold her since I didn't want her kicking the girl sitting next to me.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this on the blog before or not. I saw an awesome video clip on a kid's channel a couple months back. We ended up googling it. It's called Big Block Sing Song. Turns out it's Canadian made. Emma really likes watching them. Here is the Brave video. Pretty funny. I really love the Eat clip and the Mad clip too (just a few favs).

I am no longer nursing or pumping. I made it to 7.5 months. It makes me feel somewhat human again, not being bound by a pump. Although I'm thrilled to be done pumping, it's a little sad too. It means that Emma is getting older and although I love it, I want her to be my little baby forever.

Emma is eating tons of new foods. We let her try most of the foods that we eat. She really loves the sharp cheddar cheese that we buy.  She can eat quite a bit of it! She's still eating puffs and we've introduced cheerios too. She gets those daily to help her work on her hand coordination, which she's pretty good at. We still do the pouches of organic baby food for some of her meals. She really liked the pumpkin flavored one that we tried recently. She likes prunes, yogurt, and really most food that we give her. Her least favorite seems to be peas. One issue with the baby food pouches is that they all have fruit mixed in, meaning that they're all a little sweet. So I'm going to focus on giving her veggies (not mixed with fruit) and hope she'll learn to love them. She still is taking 4-5 bottles of formula daily. She still loves her formula. We've tried sippy cups a couple of times but we still have to hold them so that she can get the formula out of them. Otherwise, she won't tip the cup back to get the formula to come out. Earlier this week, we introduced an awesome cup called a Lollacup. The straw on the cup makes it so that she doesn't have to tip her head back. She easily drank out of the straw. I figured she would have had more trouble. She loved it! She still has a little work to do because she could get it in her mouth, but then some of the milk would come out of her mouth. I guess it takes a little coordination. At least she can suck the milk out of the straw, it's a big first step!

Her hair seems to grow and get lighter every day. She's definitely a little blondie, although a lot of people can see a hint of red in her hair too. I wouldn't call it strawberry blonde though. Although I don't think her hair color is close to Sylvie's strawberry blonde hair, this photo makes it seem similar to Sylvie's. Crazy! (Thanks Mar for letting me steal your photo). Click here to see!

She still likes to get into trouble. She's extremely adventurous. That hasn't changed at all. She still loves mother's day out, probably because there's more to explore. I think she missed getting to explore when we were in CT/NY. She seemed so incredibly happy when we got back into our apartment. One of the first things that she did was tackle her lamb pillow. Pretty cute how much she loves that pillow :-)

She's been a pretty good sleeper recently. She goes to bed around 8pm and then starts waking up around 6am. She goes to sleep in her crib at night and then early in the morning, I move her to my bed, usually once she starts to stir. Usually around 6am when she wakes up in my bed, she'll sit up and then totally collapse/ face plant into the mattress.  She does this repetitively. I think she's too tired to hold up her head.  Some days, she'll go back to sleep for an hour. Other days, she'll do that for a while until she starts crawling on me.
For naps, we started to do "cry it out" a month or so ago. I never thought I would be able to do "cry it out" and honestly had no interest in doing it. I would try to stay next to her until she fell asleep, but she'd be crying with us right next to her. She would try to stay awake and play on the bed while she was exhausted. It seems to work when we needed to do it. I prefer to stay next to her until she falls asleep, then I move her to her crib.

Things that Emma has been doing...
We've been working on waving recently. I've seen her do it a couple of times but it's usually after I'm done waving to somebody. So she won't do it on command.
She's been curling/rolling her tongue in her mouth- my guess is that she's feeling her teeth with her tongue. It's pretty cute though.

Here are a few other things she's been loving: her blankie, bath time, peek a boo, animal sounds (especially when we say quack when her duck, Mr.Quackers, is nearby), the sound of the letter z (odd, but she really likes it). In one of her books, there's a picture of a bumble bee that says "I'm a busy buzy bee." She thinks it's SO funny. She likes it when we say "zipper" too.  :-)

Ok, that's enough for now!