Checkin' in with Elaine

So, what's that Elaine up to these days? She just passed the seven month mark last week and is a thriving, content baby. Her favorite activity is to sit on the floor and play with her toys. She also lunges and twists and turns on the floor to get at things too.

She's crawling towards crawling. She's been in the crawl mode and has scooted herself backwards a couple times. For the first time yesterday, Elaine lifted her body off the ground in the crawl position. In the past, her stomach on the ground has gotten in the way of forward movement. She has now figured out that problem.

Elaine is much more interactive and commutative. She'll try to get your attention and make eye contact and laugh at silly faces. In her room, there is a chime we sometimes ring to distract her. She LOVES it. Recently, we started noticing that she would stare at it, waiting for us to chime it. This week she also stared at it while giving a very specific grunt that I hadn't heard before. I eventually realized it was a command and I rang the chime. Elaine laughed and had an expression of the deepest satisfaction.

The other non-interesting development with implications for me, is that Elaine seems to have transitioned from a 3 to 2 nap day. My whole daily schedule it took weeks to establish is now out the window. Her new schedule isn't all that predictable yet either. Today she slept an uncharacteristic 3 hours in the morning, and maybe a total of 30 minutes over 3 occasions the rest of the day. At least she sleeps well at night. I feel incredibly fortunate every night when she goes to sleep at a reasonable and consistent time. She sleeps until she's hungry (between 4:00 and 6:30am). Usually if it's before 6 am she'll go back to sleep after eating 5 or so ounces. On a couple occasions the last few days, she didn't really go back to sleep and was up for the day at 4:30 am. Those were weary days.