Almost 8 months...

I've really neglected this blog - I'm sorry! Thank goodness for Tyler keeping it semi up to date.

Malia's growing and growing. So much so that sometimes I have to do a double take when she's standing tall in her exercauser or in her walker. She's still got a few nice rolls and little chipmunk cheeks, but I don't think she'll ever be a little chunk. She's been eating solid foods great for about a month now. Around 5-6 months she got a bad cold that morphed into another cold and the few solids she was eating at the time she stopped completely for about a month. I was sad to see her interest in food go, but it was worse seeing her sick! Having a sick baby is the worst as a mother! Her appetite has picked back up since recovering and so far she's tried and is loving rice cereal, oatmeal, carrots, corn, green beans, sweet peas, apples, applesauce, bananas, pears, strawberries, mango, and cherries. We're trying to introduce her to as many foods as possible since I read somewhere that babies are most receptive to new foods between 6 and 9 months, although I don't really know how true that is (and I'm kind of hoping it's not true because there are just too many good foods out there!).

Besides eating well, Malia just started officially crawling about a week ago. She's been pulling herself around on her stomach with her arms for a while now and that slowly led to her rocking on her knees. You could almost see her thought process - there's got to be a better way! Before she started crawling I was worried about how rough our tile would be on her knees (it's all tile on our first floor which includes the living room where we spend most of our time). She's doing just fine and I think the tile made it easier for her to slide around initially. We did get a big area rug for the living room and it's double padded, but she eventually wanders away from it anyway exploring the under side of the kitchen table or trying to make her way into the kitchen.

Josie, our dog, has been great with Malia! I had my reservations about having a small dog and a small baby and even almost gave her away at one time, but I'm glad we decided to keep her. Malia crawls over Josie all the time (with our supervision) and Josie just lays there. Malia also has a new found love for pulling and yanking on things (like our skin - ouch!) and not even Josie is spared. Josie just sits there and takes it until we intervene and save her. Josie is also fabulous about not -ever- touching Malia's toys. She's so careful not to step on them and this is no easy task as they're usually sprawled all over the living room floor. There's only one toy that she's certain is a dog toy that she goes after occasionally. That one we're careful to bring out and use. Can't blaim the poor dog. Her only dog toy (a ball) Malia steals so, we've had to put that one away.

Well, that's where we're at right now! Hopefully, I'll be better about updating this blog more often especially with Malia growing and hitting different milestones. Off to spend some time with her...