7 months!

     I'm getting bad at keeping up with this, so there's going to be a lot of pictures in this post!

Sitting up by herself now!

All bundled up and ready for a dog walk!

     Ayla is now sitting up by herself, which is awesome! She can't get into or out of the sitting position by herself yet, but once she's in it, she can stay for 5 or 10 or 20 minutes. When she's on her tummy, she is on the move! Not crawling just yet, but definitely "scootching". She gets her legs going and uses her upper body strength to drag herself around. The nice thing about her not being able to get out of the sitting position yet (unless she happens to topple) is that I can have her on the ground with her toys and not have to worry about her ending up under the table or in the dog's food bowl or heading for the couch... she's getting pretty speedy and Chris and I are already planning on purchasing more baby gates for the stairs and a play pen for when she's crawling.

Blurry, but smiley!

She likes to scootch over to the toy box and pull out all of her toys

     We celebrated Thanksgiving with Chris' family in Oregon City this year at his mom's house. Carl came up from Corvallis, great grandpa Eugene, Nancy and Gary (Chris' aunt and uncle), Coby, Riley and Rick (Chris' cousins' kids and husband). My two goals for the day were to eat and sleep and I accomplished both. It was glorious :)

Me and my brother-in-law, Carl. We make a good T-day nap team.

 

      We were able to meet up with Chris' dad for dinner a few weeks ago, too (but we forgot to take pictures... sheesh!). We're hoping to get together again soon. Dinner was good (Henry's Tavern in NW Portland) and Ayla acquired a new outfit (the jacket in her toy box photo above was part of the outfit).

     My dad was home for a few days, so Ayla and I were able to spend a little time with him, too (he drives semi trucks and is away for weeks/months at a time). He brought Cupcake a cute hat that she has plenty of time to grow into:

Baldies!

          Cupcake's been enjoying lots of new foods. She still really likes bananas and sweet potato, but she also really likes avocado. She's also tried pear, apples, applesauce, butternut squash and carrots. We still  need to try peas. Chris and I are still buying the fruit/veggies fresh, pureeing them up and freezing them in ice cube trays. It's been working really well and is cheap! It's easy to pull one or two cubes out of the freezer and then let them defrost or stick 'em in the microwave for a few seconds. In addition to breastmilk (her main staple still), she gets foods 1-3 times a day depending on what we're doing that day. She seems to really enjoy it!

      Chris and I went to Bend for our 1-year anniversary/5-year wedding anniversary, but I'll post that in a separate blog since this post is getting so long!