Angelica is 8 months old!

I can hardly believe she's 8 months old already! Look at this adorable picture, though...you would never know by looking at her that this little girl had been sick with a stomach virus for six days!

Let's see...what's new in the world of Angelica? She claps now. She started clapping last Saturday and thinks it's a complete riot whenever she does it. She's also getting frighteningly close to those first steps. She navigates between pieces of furniture in the living room with ease, barely holding on for balance. She's even let go a few times. I'm sure those first few steps are just days away at this point.

Things she's into at the moment...she likes Moose and Zee on Noggin. Last night (between 1am and 3:30-ish) she had a major crying fit...Scott couldn't calm her down for two hours, so he woke me up and then I tried for about a half hour to no avail. So, I put on Noggin and the second she saw Moose and Zee, she cheered right up. About a half hour after that I was able to get her to go back to sleep. She loves music. She can't resist dancing.

She's also really developing a personality now. She's got a great sense of humor. She thinks it's hilarious to hit me or Scott in the face, and she loves to reach in my mouth and try to pull my teeth out. She knows what "no" means now, but objects to it strongly when you say it to her. As in, whenever she's about to rip fur out of one of my cats backs (or tails or heads) and I say no, she gives me a sarcastic grunt. She's also ridiculously tolerant...for being as sick as she's been, she has been extremely happy. Finally, she's becoming really loud. Loud, as in when we were walking through Target, she was in the shopping cart seeing how loud she could scream, and then laughing. We were getting some funny (and some annoyed) looks.

She's starting to reach a few more milestones. She got a second tooth (front bottom, right). She's starting to hand objects to us to play with. She's getting a little better at holding her own bottle, though still prefers us to do it for her. Oh, and the sleep thing? Yeah, she's finally got that down to a science. She just stays up a little later now. Unfortunately, this means she sleeps in a little later now too, which makes mornings a little chaotic. Still trying to find a good balance there.

I think that covers all of the latest Angelica news. We're still waiting for her to kick this stomach bug, and now she's got a cold on top of it (and yes, she very generously shared those germs with her parents, so all of us are sick). I'm sure I'll have some more news to share soon!

Angelica has TWO teeth!

Breaking news: We discovered yesterday that Angelica now has TWO teeth, both on the bottom. Which explains why she has been a crankypuss the past week.

Other things she's doing:
- Starting to stand on her own. She chickens out and crouches down and sits after about 5 seconds.
- She's been dancing for awhile, but now she REALLY gets going, at the hint of anything that could remotely be considered music. Even mommy talking to her in a sing song voice.
- Waving. She does this CONSTANTLY. She waves when we walk in a door. She waves when we walk out of a room. She waves when someone says hi, bye, or whenever someone who wasn't in the room before comes in.
- STILL SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT! YES!

And with that, I leave you with the latest, most darling photo of our princess.

Mommy Moment #5

My little girl is growing up.

I had to make a run to Target this afternoon to pick up baby wash and diaper cream, and while I was there, I skimmed through the baby clothing section, since they just got in their new variety.

I got a hint of this same thing last weekend when shopping for some clothes for her, but I thought it was just that we were in a smaller store...but no...

She has outgrown an entire section of store.

I went to the baby section, looking at all the cute footie sleepers and lo and behold, they don't make them in the 9-12 month size.

The cute outfits that they just got in the baby section, also don't come in the 9-12 month size.

That's when the above realization hit me. It hit home even further when I went through the baby food/baby items section to get the necessities I'd come for, and realized how much of that we'll never need to buy for her again. No more bottles (she'll be moving to sippy cups soon enough). No pacifiers (she never used them anyway). No little jingly toys (they don't hold her interest anymore).

My baby girl is growing up. I'm not ready to be the mom of a toddler yet!

In thinking about this, I realized that it may be time, sooner or later, for this blog to come to an end. And I'm thinking her first birthday might be the right time. I originally started this to keep family up to date on the pregnancy and on her early days, but I think keeping this blog would be more self-serving than beneficial to anyone else. Especially since I've now started my website (www.theroadtome.com).

So that's just my current thinking. I think, even if this blog does come to an end when she turns 1, I'll save the pages so she can go back and read about her time in my tummy, and her first few months in this crazy, crazy world.

New blog

I haven't posted here in awhile because I've started a new venture...

The Road to Me: One Woman's Journey to Herself

You can check out my latest and greatest there!

Angelica is 7 months old!

I'm late on this update - it's been a rather busy few weeks since she turned seven months! It was right after Christmas (December 29th) when she had her seven month birthday, and right after that was New Year's, then back to work and I also started my master's degree. Anyway, look at our smiley little girl! She's such a happy kid. She's finally making up for those first few months where all she did was cry, because now she is all smiles, all the time. It's great!

Here is a slideshow of photos from Christmas, including some professional ones we got done at Sears.. Her first Christmas was AWESOME. I swear, it's like they opened up a Toys R Us store in our apartment now. She had a really good time though, she even helped open a few of her presents.

She's hit a few more milestones recently. Let me think what I may not have covered already...she's up to six words now! She says "mama", "dada", "baba", "kitty", "ducky", and her latest one, "ah-choo!" Which is exactly what you think it is. She sneezed, her daddy said "ah-choo!" and she replied with "ah-choo!" It is really freaking adorable!

Also, we've started moving onto more solid foods, namely puffs. She got them for the first time on Christmas, they were a gift in her stocking. She loves them and she's gotten it down to a science how to pick one up from her tray and get it into her mouth. So far, we haven't had any major mishaps with them, other than on Christmas day, she plopped down on the floor and got one stuck in her throat in the process, and gagged and threw up all over her pretty dress. So now she only gets them when she's strapped in her high chair.

We also took her to her first Santa Land, hosted by my company. This picture is of all of us at the cookie decorating table. I have another picture from that day, showing her trying to eat a gingerbread cookie (she didn't succeed). She did succeed that day, though, in taking a huge bite from her daddy's italian ice when he wasn't looking. He left it on a spoon and she just helped herself.

Going back to milestones, you'll see in this picture, she's got the standing thing down now. In addition to standing, she dances. Anytime there's music, she just starts bouncing up and down or swaying side to side. It's like some sort of knee-jerk reaction how she does it, too. She doesn't just kind of ease into it...nope, the second music starts it's like a violent, "OH MY GOD I MUST SHAKE MY BABY TUSH" reaction. It's freaking adorable. She does it a lot when playing with this table, because just about every button on it plays music.

About two weeks ago, she started waving! This is really cute. She doesn't do it all the time, but we were walking around the mall one afternoon and she was waving at everyone we walked past. She also waves every time we walk through a door. This includes her bedroom door, so it's like every morning, she leaves her room and starts waving to the world. She also waves to everyone when we walk in the door at day care.

Finally, this past week marks two new milestones: she can successfully hold her own bottle (whew...this may be one of the only milestones she's slow on!), and she's FINALLY SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT. You heard it here, folks...for the past five days, she has gone down to sleep around 9pm and not stirred until 7am (or, in some cases, 8am) the next morning. Of course, I'm sure now that I've said this, she'll start waking up at 2am again...but this is huge for us. Not only do we not have to worry so much about alternating nights, she's also starting to wake up at a convenient time for us for work so nobody's getting up super early (except on the days where she wakes up at 6am).

I think I've pretty much gotten everyone up to date! I'll make sure to keep up on the posts better from now on :)