7 months on

I thought it was about time I caught up with the antics of our little lady. She is doing so well and we're endlessly proud of her. The crawling is interesting. She started out "proper" crawling, then decided it was easier (?) to go back to tummy shuffling commando style. Today though she's back up on her knees with her tummy off the floor, but isn't really giving it her all. I think she will be back to that style in the next few days. Proud parent moment today...while saying good morning to daddy in bed this morning she pushed herself up to stand, then after I finished feeding her she did exactly the same on the sofa. Her little legs are so strong. My mum is convinced she'll skip crawling and go to walking early like I did, but we'll see.

She is so vocal and giggling all the time and generally is the happiest baby, full of smiles and cheeky grins for everyone. Still no sign of a "dada" though. I'm sure once she starts then "mama" won't get a look in. She is doing so well on the solid food front and her motor skills are coming on in leaps and bounds. She can pick up the smallest piece of food now and put it in her mouth but she does still like to cram. She is very experimental with her tastes and is never afraid to try something new. In fact I don't think there's anything she hasn't liked yet.

Sleep wise, well, it just keeps getting better! Since we opted for the early bedtime she goes off to sleep with minimal fuss, is sound within 5-10 minutes and is pretty much doing 12 hours straight every night. Occasionally we get a 6am awakening or a 4am cry for a stray dummy which has escaped the cot, but more often than not she sleeps soundly and so do we. Last night she woke around 11pm and we could here her chatting to her teddy bears on the monitor, after 10 minutes it all went quite and when I popped my head into her room she was sound asleep and had even put her own dummy back in. Looks like she can finally self settle. Nap times can still be a bit hit and miss and I have struggled with the timings of her first nap of the day, but the last couple of days have been good and 10am seems to be the magic number. She's taking two good naps a day and then powering through til bedtime. So, an excellent start to 7 months!

Sleeping right through

Just a week shy of 7 months, it appears Bella has got the hang of this sleep malarkey. We've had 2 nights of 12 hours completely undisturbed sleep from her. I know I shouldn't start getting too comfortable with it though as we've found things can change very quickly. Maybe all the effort of crawling is wearing her out. She's been up 2 hours and is 1 hour into a nap now too :) A refreshed baby makes for a very happy baby!