family reunion

this week, we all celebrated penny's eight month-day.  it's getting harder and harder to get her to sit still for these photos - all she wants to do is eat the signs.  so, for eight months, eight photos!

she's definitely got teeth!  they've spent this week breaking through, and she's been enjoying chomping on the spoon as she's eating - she's got some grip!  we still haven't been able to get a photo of them, but we're working on it!

yesterday was my mom's side of the family's reunion - penny got to meet lots of cousins, and it's always wonderful to get together.  lots of firsts, too!  penny ate french fries (big yum) and cantaloupe (also yum); and she went swimming with me in a big pool!

teeth! and a tutorial!

so we definitely think penny is teething for real now, mainly because we can see and feel her teeth.  she can now eat bananas three ways - mashed, picking up her own pieces, and taking bites from a whole fruit.

She is so proud!

On Wednesday, after Penny went to sleep, I made her a present!  It was the third time I'd brought out my sewing machine since she'd been born, and while not perfect, I'm pretty proud of what I made and thought I'd show you what I did in case you have a baby who loves making noise, too!  Here's how I made a recycled onsie noisy blanket.

Does that make sense?  If you have any questions, leave them in the comments!  Enjoy!

12 hours.

this week, it all caught up with me.  the heat, the middle of the night wake ups, the housework, the job work, the laundry, the chasing after an active baby - and i fell asleep at 8:30pm on friday.  those of you who know me best know that when i say "i'll just take a quick nap, i'll be out in 20 minutes" after, say...5pm, it means you shouldn't count on seeing me until morning.  luckily, alex knows me better than i know myself, so he just waited for me to get up at 11pm so that i could brush my teeth, change into pajamas, and head right back to bed.
yesterday, penny had her first bagel!  i tore one in half, and she gnawed on the crusty part and ate little bits off of the interior.  i think she really enjoyed it!  she's also added torn pieces of bread to her "things she can pincer" list, and has mastered cheerios - basically, our baby is a duck.
along with the eating of cheerios, she is a total cheerio magician, hiding them away who knows where, making them appear in her fists on the changing table, even getting them as far as the bedroom.  we are all in awe.
aunt jodi and eric learned this firsthand last night, as they watched penny for our first evening out in (conservatively) a year or so.  we went to a wedding - i put on makeup and everything - and we had to interact with humans while trying not to make faces at them or sing a running commentary of the night.  penny was not exactly on her best behavior, but jodi and eric are champions!  when we got home she was sleeping peacefully, and neither the apartment nor eric had burned down.  hopefully we can convince them to come back to do it again.
this week's collage is an homage to cheerios!  i only took two of the photos!  the rest were taken by alex!  he took all of the good ones!

where did the naps go?

this week, penny has decided that naps aren't necessary.  though her eyes may be rolling back in her head, though she may not be able to hold up her head, she is not sleepy, and suggesting that she nap is a ridiculous offense to her delicate sensibilities.
on the other hand, she is now the master of cheerio eating!  she loves having books read to her!  she makes up and plays games - with us and by herself.  she is starting to say "up" when she wants to be picked up, and she said "yay" and clapped!  we're working on waving hi and bye.
today was finally a break in the heat, and we had a long walk outside.  though it is undoubtedly still summer, today felt like this:

food!

this week, penny started eating pieces of food!  we started her off with cut up banana - like this:

but quickly realized that we were just being cruel.  bananas are slippery.  we have given her half cheerios every day since, and her pincer grasp is getting very impressive!  when she gets them in her mouth, though, it's pretty clear that she thinks the work isn't quite worth the reward.
penny spent this week with her grandparents - my parents on monday and tuesday, and alex's parents wednesday - friday.  she spent her days playing and singing, taking walks through the neighborhood, and trying to stay cool in what may be the hottest july on record.
today, we made a concerted effort to relax.  after spending the morning cleaning the refrigerator coils (woo hoo!), we took a long walk outside.  penny went on the swings in the playground FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME:

for someone who has NEVER BEEN ON A SWING BEFORE, she did a really amazing job of holding on, looking all around and having a glorious time.
right after swing time, we gave penny her first ever snack.  possibly the worst name for a food product ever, baby mumm mumms were a huge hit!  she figured out what to with them right away - and had a great time chomping and gumming them into submission:

we haven't spent that much time just hanging out all together in a long time - it was great to relax, and not just stop between errands.

photo contest! why not?

hello!

after a long week of penny not getting any teeth, not wanting to drink any milk, and REALLY not wanting to sleep, we decided to enter her huge grin in a photo contest!  if you'd like, you can vote for her.  if you don't want to, that's ok too!  no stress.  seriously.  it doesn't effect the outcome of the contest, just the "reader's choice" part.  here's a link:

Vote for me in this contest!

Contest details

wow!  that's way more official looking than i thought it was going to be!

not much news from the week - penny has a new playgym, which is pretty awesome.  she has discovered that if one of us is not in the living room, we're probably in the kitchen, and she crawls to find us.  her little head poking around the doorway is probably the cutest thing i've ever seen, and i'll have to remember to take a camera with me so that you can see it too.

i haz teh dums

i just took about a bajillion new photos of penny, and though i was warned and asked several times whether i was SURE i wanted to do it, i deleted more than half of them from my camera, wiping them completely from existence.  sigh.  i didn't actually want to do that.  i had a brilliant sequence of photos of penny noticing a toy directly behind her, twisting all the way around, picking it up, turning back around and putting it in her mouth, all while sitting up that i was hoping to somehow turn into a flash movie for you.  i have the first four of those photos left.
they look like this:

i KNOW!  exciting, right?  you can't even see her face!  but here is your assignment...it's a thought exercise!  just imagine what we'd all be looking at if i HADN'T ignored every warning picasa could throw at me and gone ahead and eliminated the rest of the series.
adorable, no?
at least i kept this one: