Watch Me Grow!

I was just looking through my pictures of my little babes and noticing how much she has changed. 

 NEW BORN:

MONTH 1:

 MONTH 2:

MONTH 3:

 

 MONTH 4:

MONTH 5:
 

 MONTH 6:

MONTH 7:

MONTH 8:

 

And now we are here in April, in her 9th MONTH!  

 What a beautiful girl!

Baby Ivy is now 8 months old.  She is very curious about EVERYTHING.  I thought she was a non-snuggler before, but no.  Now she will hardly sit in my lap to sleep let alone eat.  She wants to see everything, be everywhere, and touch everything.

I couldn't say exactly when she started sitting up.  She just does.  I propped her up with her hands out and legs spread occasionally, and then I realized she was sitting up.  She started scooching about two weeks ago.  She tucks her toes and army crawls one arm, but the other arm is out stretched so that she is ready to grab whatever she may encounter.  She is very close to crawling.  She gets up on all fours and does the rock, and she also recently gets on her toes for a plank position. 

She is a very good eater, if she can concentrate that long.  However, she does not like cold food.  If it is from the refrigerator, she will not eat it.  So I do what I said I would not do, and I warm it up.  Her very favorite is baby oatmeal cereal made with water.  One day Uncle Nate and cousins Taege and Tim were over.  Nate didn't believe she could eat a whole (IKEA) bowl full, but she gobbled it up, and said, "Mmm!  Mmm!" after almost every bite.  Unfortunately, due to bowel functioning needs, she can't eat only oatmeal.  She will tolerate green beans if I add a shake of salt and it's warm, yams with apples if it's warm, applesauce if it's warm, or squash with split peas if it's warm.  The only thing she will eat cold is avocado.

 

She is really figuring out her voice these days.  She sticks her little tongue out and says, "Schlah! Schlah! Schlah!" or "Blah! Blah! Blah" or "Ta! Ta! Ta!" Drooling with each syllable.  However, last week she also figured out yelling.  She will babble and then all of a sudden she just lets out a big, high pitched screech!  I'm pretty sure she learned it from the neighbor girl who is 14 months and a screamer.  However, she may just be developing her lungs for her future singing career!

She also LOVES water.  She loves swimming.  We have been swimming a few times when we've ventured to a distant warmer land that has heated pools (like South Carolina and Vegas).  She had a blast.  She loves the shower as well.  She will just lean over and let the warm water run down her head and back.  Then she sits back up and opens up her mouth for a drink from one of the streams of water.  If I have a drink of water, she insists she needs a few sips.  She is pretty good at drinking from a glass, but if I don't want floaties left in my drink then I sometimes use the end of a straw.  We're still working on using a straw the regular way.

Ivy is so much fun.  She is so sweet, but she is also developing a sassy side.  She knows what she wants.  We know we're going to have our hands full in the very near, as well as distant futures!