Time is flying folks- my precious little baby is 7 months old today!!  Jamie and I are really enjoying every minute with Jay right now; his personality has really developed lately, he loves to discover new things around him and is pretty happy most of the time.  Honestly, he is just an absolute joy to be around!

the stats:

*Weight: 17lbs

*Length: 27 inches long

*Teeth: two!!

Some things of note:

*Jay is about to be mobile, well I should say crawling.  He has been moving quite frequently for a while now, rolling to reach things that he wants (primarily one of his animals), scooting on the floor on his tummy, doing complete 360’s on his belly so he can see everything around him and most recently getting up on all fours and face planting to close in on items of interest.  However, I know that my days of him staying in relatively the same location as he is placed are limited since he has been getting up on his hands and knees and rocking back and forth.  He also can occasionally get one hand moved and out but that’s as far as he gets.  It won’t be long now and I am going to be in trouble when he’s on the move!

*He is quite the talker, stringing consonants and vowels together and jabbering on and on.  My current favorite is “Mama”… even though I know that it’s not intentional I still LOVE the sound of it :-)  He also says Dada, baba, yaya and something that resembles “Hey”.

*Along with talking, screaming is also a frequent thing around here lately.  He squeals and makes all kinds of high pitched noises while playing and when he is really excited.

*He can be pretty shy.  He will scream and talk like a mad man while we are the house or around people that he knows but if we are in public and someone talks to him that he isn’t familiar with he clams up.  I guess we won’t have to teach the “don’t talk to strangers” lesson to this kiddo…

*His sleeping is leaps and bounds above where it was last month!  He is sleeping through the night consistently, from 7pm to about 8am now (this took a painful week and a half of letting him cry it out it the middle of the night, but it was worth it) and naps for about 1.5 to 2hrs in the morning and about 45 minutes in the afternoon.

Likes:

*Peaches!  Honestly, he has gotten a whole lot better about eating lately and will eat just about anything we give him.  If you can force at least one bite into his mouth, the kid will gobble the rest of (fill in the blank here) down.  We have given him everything from sweet potatoes, pears and blueberries to fresh avocado.  He really is an advocate for all orange foods (maybe he thinks it will keep his hair red) so he loves sweet potatos, carrots and peaches!  I think he has a fruit compartment in is stomach like his Mama; seriously he can be full and refuse to eat another bite of anything until he realizes it’s fruit and then the mouth couldn’t open up any wider.

*The Bath.  He is still a huge fan of bath time and squeals and flails his arms around when we start to run the water regardless of how tired he is.

*His animals!  He loves, loves, loves all three of them and frequently looks for them around the house.  I don’t think that he could smile any bigger than he does when we get Piper up (out of her crate) in the morning.  He also squeals at the animals, when he is really excited. I’m not sure that they really like it but I think he’s just telling them that he loves them.

*Books are also still a huge hit. I have been really surprised by the length of his attention span.  He can stick with us (on most days) through half of a Bill Peet book and he loves most other books that are read to him.  I would still say that his favorite is Hand Hand Fingers Thumb but he really likes a lot of the ones we read.

*Peek-a-Boo is a super fun game since he has been able to rip whatever cloth we throw over his head.  He also really likes when I bounce him up and down on my legs and sing Yankee Doodle, not sure why but it does, so I continue to do it.

*Playing!!  This kid can sit for seriously long periods of time and just play.  He loves most toys although his caterpillar stacking cups are among the favorites along with Mama’s measuring spoons and measuring cups.

Dislikes:

* When I leave the room :-(  Lately (and thankfully not consistently) he will be happily playing without a care in the world until he sees me leave the room at which point he promptly bursts in to huge crocodile tears!  I can only hope that this will not get any worse…

And with that, I’ll leave you with 7 pictures for 7 months (I couldn’t pick just one) and outtakes of course.  By the way, the block pictures are getting really challenging to take, especially since I am taking them on our really high bed, but I like the challenge!