Almost-Eight-Month Madison

I’ve been meaning to write a Madison update for months now.

I’m sure you’ve been on the edge of your seat waiting for one.  Is she sitting?  Teething?  Eating solids?  Crawling?

Yes, yes, yes, and almost.

First, can she sit?  All of our kids have been over-achievers when it comes to sitting.  By five months they can sit for minutes at a time unassisted:

By six months they’re pros:

Does she have teeth?  Yes!

This picture shows her first tooth and her second bottom tooth has also surfaced.

Is she eating solids?  Yes.

She loves her veggies.  Surprisingly it’s the fruits I’m having a hard time getting her to accept. She acts like she’s eating a lemon with each bite.  I’ve been mixing fruit into her cereal to get her used to the taste and I’m starting to be able to give her some fruits on their own with slightly less face puckering.

Have I ever let Brooke feed her?  Once and only once.

Why only once? Because how many times would you want to clean up this?

Does Caroline still love her to death?  Are you seriously asking me that?  Of course yes.

What about Spencer?  He’s less doting, but just as cute with her.

Can she crawl?  Not yet, but she’s starting to get into position:

Can she clap?  Yes!

My parents came over for a visit and someone clapped which scared Madison to death.  Naturally, we thought it was fun to terrify her so we continued our visit with sudden bursts of clapping interspersed.

The next day, she clapped, easy as that.

Does she wave?  The mind is willing but the body lacks the coordination.  She caught onto clapping so easily we started trying to get her to wave.  When we wave at her she’ll sort of spaz out flailing her arms all over the place trying to figure out how to replicate what we’re doing.  You’ll get there, baby girl.  Keep at it.

Does she smile?  Only all the time:

Are her eyes still blue?  Yes!  Our only baby to have kept her blue eyes.  We think they’re here to stay.

Do yourself a favor and click on these pictures.  The sun was shining and making her eyes the prettiest color:  I didn’t edit the picture at all:

Do I have any other pictures of Madison looking cute?  Yes, thanks for asking!

I had set the boppy pillow around Madison as she was sitting to prevent her from hurting herself should she tip over.  She ended up in this position and the girls thought she looked like she was in a tube floating on the water:

Conehead:

How’s she sleeping?  I hate to mention sleep habits because without fail after I write about them my babies always regress to a horrible degree.  However, we have done the dreaded sleep training and now she usually sleeps through the night.  Hallelujah!  The bad news is she almost always wakes up at 6:00 on the nose which leaves room for lots of improvement in my book.  I’m trying to convince her that 7:00 is a better time to wake up and see the world but so far she doesn’t believe me.

One last personality quirk to note is she’s a quiet little thing.  She’s so quiet that Dallas and I call her our little mute.  You know how babies are supposed to coo?  And babble?  Ours just sort of doesn’t do that.  I mentioned this to the doctor at her six-month check up and he didn’t seem concerned yet, so we’re just talking to her tons and hoping her speech will develop normally and that she’ll find her voice one of these days.

All in all I’d say we lucked out once again in the baby department. Madison is a keeper and we love her to bits.