Erica at Seven Months

Erica has discovered the raspberry. She especially likes to make one (perhaps only can make one) with either her hand, or my finger, jammed into her mouth. She grabs my finger, shoves it in, and raspberries away, quite proud of herself! This is in addition to her usual Lamaze breathing ('hee hee huu huu'). She also added BaBaBa a few weeks ago, but she seems to have forgotten that. She 'talks' with vowel sounds only: "uuuuueeee" and mostly to Amy and Lena when she hasn't seen them all day, like she's saying "Where on earth were you, I was so bored and I wanted to play!". She still gets excited when she sees them and flaps her arms up and down and kicks her legs. She likes all other kids too, and is often nonplussed when the random kids she solicits for play in the supermarket (by kicking and flapping and "oooo"-ing) don't respond to her.

The moving is still 'nearly there' but not there yet. She took one crawl-step today; we spent the rest of the day encouraging her to repeat the feat, in vain. I'll have lots of video footage (again) of a non-plussed baby, distracted by the camera itself, with background noise of Jessica Rabbit and a nutty mother going "Come on! Come on! Come on!". She stands, mostly to play the piano. She has stood up by herself twice, once in the bath, which I am going to try to photograph tonight, as her bottom is just delicious!

I love watching her figure out her hands. After a period when I thought she'd turned ambidextrous, she's a definite left-hander again. I think she just realized her right hand was there, after having it curled around her thumb for months. Now, it's her left she uses to reach for something, and while she's happy to eat her cracker with only her left hand, if I put it in her right hand, she'll bring the left up to help. She sits there twisting her wrist and watching the effect, or delicately moving two fingers together, just to see.

She eats apples for breakfast, sometimes with weetbix and milk (mother's milk), soft-cooked rice with pumpkin or sweet potato, and baby crackers. Nothing else yet, as she got slightly sick last week, a low fever and lots of throwing up, so I cut back on her food. She likes to eat, she's just got the hang of getting the food off the spoon efficiently, after several weeks of poking her tongue out at the wrong time! She likes eating crackers most of all.