A New Noise

Brooks learned a new noise the other day...



He crawled around all day making this sound. It was cracking me up!

A BIG WEEK

I know I usually give an update each month on Brooks' "birthday", but this time I just couldn't wait. Brooks is exactly 7 1/2 months old, and it has been a big week for him. On Saturday, he finally made sense of the whole "crawling" thing. He was rocking back and forth on his knees and then picked his hand up and moved it forward...and then the other hand...and then he was crawling. And now, all he wants to do is crawl. It's hard to change a diaper on a baby that is trying to get away. On top of that excitement...my baby is FINALLY getting his first tooth. I just happened to feel around in his mouth the other day, and his gums felt a little different. I checked it out (which is nearly impossible to look into a baby's mouth) and sure enough - I could see a little bud trying real hard to poke through the gums. No wonder he has been fussing and drooling so much. All of a sudden, my little baby isn't such a little baby anymore.

I just can't get enough

This last one makes me laugh...his hair was going crazy because of the static, and he's had this obsession today about sticking out his tongue.

Fun Food

Brooks enjoys sucking on wagon wheels, but he has been taking too big of a bite lately. So the other night I decided to break them apart into smaller pieces and put them on the table for him to grab. He loves this! He grabs the pieces with his tiny little fingers and tries to make it to his mouth. Some times he'll get distracted by the other pieces on the table, so he ends up dropping one piece just to grab another. And when he gets a piece in his mouth he actually does a really good job "chewing" it. It's totally cute! Tonight we went out to eat ($1 mini margaritas and Mexican food), and I brought some wagon wheels to break apart and give to Brooks to chew on so he wouldn't get bored. He gobbled up 3 wagon wheels and would've eaten more if I had brought any more. As soon as one was in his mouth, he was grabbing for another piece. He was getting a little greedy! When our food got there I thought it would be nice to share some of my black beans with Brooks. I put a pile of the beans in front of him, and he loved grabbing them and shoving them into his mouth. (And for those of you thinking that I put food down on a dirty restaurant table, I will have you know that I totally washed it down first.) So, Brooks pretty much ate the entire time that we were at the restaurant. It was amazing! Some times I look at his belly and wonder how anything else will fit in there.
[For those of you who are wondering what the heck a wagon wheel is, I added a picture as a visual aid.]

He Definitely has his Moments

I was reading my friend's blog the other day, and she mentioned that you always see pictures of smiling babies. This kind of leads others to think that babies are always happy, or pictures of smiling babies are easy to get. Let me quote my friend, "Babies DO cry, they DO get sick, and they DO get mad sometimes it is what they do and that is why they are called babies. So don't be fooled by all the happy babies and think that every baby is just blissful 100% of the time because it is just not true. The smiles just make it all worthwhile kinda like it is GOD's way of reassuring us that these are His priceless gifts." I couldn't have said it any better, which is why I used her quote (thanks Jen).
Brooks is actually a pretty happy baby. I know I don't have my own to compare, but I see other babies, and it seems to be that Brooks could be labeled 'a happy baby'. He's pretty chill and relaxed, and rarely fusses. Lately he's learned to throw little tantrums when things don't go his way. Usually these happen when I take something away from him (cell phone, remote, water bottle, or something else that doesn't really belong to him). I try to replace the item with something that he'll enjoy, but some times it's too late and he is too upset to realize that the item has been replaced. At home it's easy to just let him throw his fit and then come back to him. He throws he head back and arms up in the air and just screams! It's a funny site (at home), but out in public it is embarrassing. Now, he's really own done it once in public. We were at a restaurant the other day and Chad was letting him suck on a cucumber. Well, he loved it. When it became a chocking hazard, it was taken away...and then came the tantrum. Chad took him outside with his paci to calm him down.
The point being that Brooks has many faces, and he definitely has his moments. He was fussing in his highchair the other day to get out, or something, I'm not really sure why he was fussing. So, I thought I'd get the camera to prove my point that no baby is perfect. The funny thing is that once I got the camera out to take the picture, he stopped. I'd turn around and he'd fuss, then I'd spin around to take the picture and he'd be fine again. Ironic. But I did catch him in a fit. You can see from the pictures how it progressed.

7 months old

Can that be right? Is my son really 7 months old? Has it really been 7 months since I lived in the hospital and then met Brooks for the first time? Where is the time going?! Brooks is growing bigger everyday. He still doesn't really have any "chunk" to him. But - he is definitely growing. Here's some things that he is doing these days:

* He sits up extremely well
* Rolls over with ease
* Sleeps 11+ hours a night
* He eats carrots, green beans, applesauce, peaches, squash, rice cereal, and oatmeal. Although he's not much of a fan when it comes to bananas and avocados (we'll keep trying). And sweet potatoes seem to give him gas.
* He gets up on all fours
* He babbles using the /m/, /b/, /d/, and /p/ sounds mixed in with some vowels
* He likes to drink from my water bottle (or try at least)
* He throws temper tantrums when you take a "toy" away (by "toy" I mean my cell phone or something else that's not his)
* He's laughing more and more
* Peek-a-Boo is a fun game
* He's finally grown into appropriate size clothing (6-9 mos)

I throw in that last one because since birth, Brooks has always been in smaller sized clothes. At first the preemie clothes were even too big. Here's a picture of the outfit he came home in (premie) and a pair of p.j.'s that he's wearing now (6-9mos). I can hardly believe that he used to fit into that little outfit!

He was in newborn sized clothes for what seemed like forever!

And now he is wearing 6-9 mos. Here he is posing for his monthly chair picture in one of my favorite 6-9 mos outfit (thanks Lindsey):

Snowshoeing

We went out last Saturday to go snowshoeing with some highly experienced friends. Well, we've had some really warm weather, and apparently the mountains have as well. There was plenty of snow, but not enough to need our snowshoes (that was kind of the whole point). We ended up carrying our shoes and just hiking. We went with our friends Nate and Kristen, and their little girl, Tenley (aka Brooks' girlfriend). Brooks is still too small for the backpack, so we had him in the Baby Bjorn. Chad carried him up the hill and he did great. On the way down he screamed for about 30 minutes straight. He was SO tired and apparently cold. When we got down his little lip was quivering. I felt so bad. Despite my best efforts to bundle him up, the shadows and wind were too much for the little guy on the way down. He ended up falling asleep in the car and slept for 3 hours once we got home. He was tuckered out! Hopefully we'll get out again soon and actually have some snow to walk around in.