8 Months

Eleanor is 8 months (or 35 weeks) old today!

Here are just a few things that I love about our 8 month old baby girl:

• She has started initiating smiles. Nothing warms my heart more than when I look at her and she smiles at me. Throughout the day she gives me these sweet smiles all on her own, and it feels like she' reminding me to enjoy the present moment and smile too.
  
  
• She is either really friendly or really afraid of strangers, depending on the day. Sometimes she is all smiles and make friends with everyone around her. Other times she gives people blank, serious stares and puts her head down on my shoulder.
  
  
• She likes to sit on the floor and play with her toys, but only if I sit on the floor with her. If I stand up, she immediately whines at me until I sit back down.
  
  
• She loves to blow zerberts on any bit of exposed skin she can find. Arms, shoulders, bellies, legs. All skin is fair zerbert game for her! She also likes to receive zerberts. After blowing on her belly since she was a newborn, it finally makes her laugh!
  
  
• Books are becoming some of her favorite toys. She loves to open them up and attempt to turn the pages, but she isn't very good at it yet.
  
  
• When she gets excited or is being silly, she yells and straightens both of her arms out in front of her, with her hands curled into little fists. It's hilarious! It's like her little body just can't contain all of her energy.
  
  
• She loves going to the park and swinging. She starts to laugh as soon as I put her in the swing, and giggles and squeals the entire time.

34 Weeks

Eleanor is 34 weeks old!

She is so good at waving now! I mentioned before that she learned how to do it, but she really has it down and will even initiate waving herself and wave if we say "Hi!". I was telling Andrew last night that it seems so incredible because it's the first thing she has done that we have really taught her. It's making us want to give baby sign language a try.

Look, all four teeth!

33 Weeks

Eleanor is 33 weeks old!

She wasn’t really in the mood to be my model when I took these pictures, and she really didn’t like it when I took away the fun lens cap she had just found, but I have to admit, I kind of love pictures of her crying. So much emotion! So much drama! But everything turned out alright in the end.

This week Eleanor really developed mastery over the pincher grip. She is now a puffs eating machine, working that little thumb and forefinger like a pro. Because of doing Baby Led Weaning she learned to pick up food, hold it, and take little bites off of it rather than putting the entire thing in her mouth, and she tries to do this with puffs even though they are so tiny. It’s pretty much the cutest thing ever to watch her gingerly pick up a little star-shaped puff, bring it to her mouth, and then nibble off one of the points.

This week she also started learning how to wave. We can only get her to wave back about half the time, but it seems like when she is doing it there is that little glimmer of recognition in her eyes. It’s really amazing to watch her learning and making connections.

She is starting to seem so big to us. Some mornings when she wakes up it looks like she's grown a few inches just overnight. And look at that last picture. Our baldy is finally growing some hair!