PICTURES!

1st hair cut!

I took Elea to get her first haircut today. Not even 7 months and she had an intense mullet. I've been wanting to cut it for weeks now but Jeff was having none of that. But finally he realized that she did indeed have a mullet, so then the past few days he was bugging me to get it done ASAP. So then I started to put it off until today the girl who is usually on the bike next to me in spin class mentioned that she thought Elea was cute and that she has a ton of hair. (She sees her in the daycare when she drops off her kids). I said, "Yeah, she's got a mullet right now." Her response was, "yeah, I noticed that." HELLO?! Really?! So funny. She wasn't being rude, but just matter of fact. Anyway, point being, if complete strangers will tell you that your daughter has a mullet, it's probably time to get it taken care of.

My friend Amanda cuts hair so I had her do it this afternoon. She shortened the back so that it is more even and less scraggly. Then she trimmed the front so that her hair would not hang in her eyes constantly. So now I have a 7 month old with legit bangs. Who's ever even heard of such a thing?

** I was really having a good "mom" day and saved some of the hair for her baby book and took before and after pictures. I then left the camera and hair sitting on Amanda's counter. I'll post them tomorrow. (the pictures, not the hair).**

Alligator Crawl

When I started taking pictures of her she caught sight of the string hanging from my camera. That's what she was focused on until I blocked her with my foot.




Elea can get wherever she wants to go these days. She hasn't progressed passed rocking on her hands and knees but it definitely hasn't stopped her from moving around!

. . . and yes, even Divas have bad hair days.

The incredible shrinking man.

So I wasn't going to post about this because he'll probably get embarrassed but whatever. Jeff has lost 33.4 lbs since New Year's Day. Probably more than that since that weight in was almost a week ago. We're doing a biggest loser competition with his siblings & spouses and he is a machine. His sister's husband won their weight class the first week and that's all it took to get him motivated. . . now he's dropping weight like it's his job.

I, on the other hand, am losing weight like a part-time fill-in temp. But what do ya do.

Life is about to get a little more interesting.

Elea has been scooting around on her belly alligator style for the past couple of weeks. Her forearms are constantly red and chaffed because it doesn't matter how big of a blanket I put on the floor, she prefers the rug and carpet for gettin' around. On Monday I was on the phone with Angie and I looked down at Elea and she was up on her hands and knees. (Then she face planted and got ticked). The hands and knees thing has progressed to hands & knees with a forward and backward rocking motion followed by a face/shoulder plant and yell/cry of frustration from Elea.

So according to Angie who is my go-to girl for all things baby development related- she'll be crawling any day now. And then the fun begins. I guess we'll be ordering the baby gates sooner than later. It's crazy. She's not even 7 months old yet. Combine her probably crawling relatively early with her mop of hair and she's gonna seem 5 before she hits a year old. So weird.

Oh yeah, one other thing. She knows how to get out of her bumbo chair. It's kind of scary actually because she twists to the side, pulls one foot under her and then proceeds to launch herself out. Luckily, there has been someone to stop her everytime but it has become necessary to hold one of her ankles almost constantly while she's in the chair. And that's with the tray on. I guess that's why the box says not to put children on a counter or table while in the chair . . .

Guess we're back to the sleeping bag jammies . . .

Picture explanation: We had a crib bumper on her crib but she moves around A TON in her crib. Actually, she moves around A TON all the time. After a few times of finding her with her face smashed into the crib bumper we decided to take it out. I'd rather her tweak her arm or leg then suffocate. (One's permanent, the other isn't). So, that's why we took the crib bumper off. But after the first few nights/naps she figured it out and now I have blankets shoved along the edge of the crib so she can't push her binkie out onto the floor as easily.

6 months.

Milestones:
On Sunday I was asking my MIL if she thought that Elea made sounds like a normal baby. Because up to that point, she very rarely made any noise at all, except for when she cried and the sound "geee".
Jeff thinks she heard me "talking trash," because starting Monday morning she has become way more vocal. When she gets frustrated she gets almost loud. It's pretty funny. Her noises have grown in variety too. She doesn't "babble" much except for when she has her binky in.

I feel like she's almost been trained in a "Pavlov's dogs" sort of way. Whenever we click our tongues on the roof of our mouths, she smiles. For about 2 seconds. And then goes straight faced again.

All of a sudden she likes to sleep on her back. It's weird. It's going to look awesome if she rubs a bald spot on the back of her head.

She spends a lot of time on her tummy on the floor. We spread some toys all around a big blanket and she scoots around to play with them. By scooting I mean that she draws her knees up under her and then tries to move forward on her face. Usually it just results in moving away from what she is trying to get to instead of making progress towards it. But now she's figured out that she can just reach out and grab the blanket in front of her and pull her arm back and it brings the toy to her.

She can roll from her tummy onto her back but hasn't really figured out how to get back to her tummy again (on purpose at least).

She's starting to understand peek-a-boo and actually smiles instead of just looking at me like I'm a complete idiot.