Layla - 7 Months

What we lacked in good month pictures at Layla's six month shoot we made up for this month!

 Layla is seven months old!! That means we're OVER halfway to a year, which just seems absurd. I don't remember time going by this quickly before I had children. 

Look at this Little Beauty.

Pretty sure that's the most gorgeous seven month old I've ever seen before! 

I was sneakier this time and put the sign on the couch before I set her down in front of it so she wouldn't see it right away. She did discover it eventually though.

Goofy girl.

This past month has been a milestone one for Layla Bug.

* She started eating solid foods. And she loves them! She's had sweet potatoes, squash, peaches, peas, carrots, avocado, prunes, and pears so far, and she loves them all! 

* She has started sitting up on her own.

In fact, not only can she sit up on her own, but she can actually push herself up from laying on the ground into a sitting position (something Landon didn't do till he was almost 9 months old). This past weekend we were getting ready to leave for KC and Kyle was out loading the van while I got the kids ready. Layla was laying in the living room playing & I went back to get Landon up from his nap. When I came out she was sitting up in the middle of the room, happy as can be and looking very pleased with herself. I yelled out at Kyle to ask if he had sat her up, which of course he hadn't. Sneaky girl. Now she does it all the time. She still tips over quite a bit when she's sitting up though, and doesn't like that part very much (Landon used to think that was really funny and would even do it on purpose...Layla's a little more dramatic about things).

* She held her own bottle of juice for the first time.

She still prefers to have me hold her bottle most of the time, but every now and then she'll hold on for herself.

* The fact that Layla is not crawling yet is really more of a technicality than anything. She's Ranger class when it comes to army crawling, can roll and spin in whatever direction she wants, so basically she gets wherever she wants to go. She'll drag her way over to the dining room under the piano, into the corner under the bookshelf, or over to the gate by the kitchen to see what I'm doing. 

Thought the corner of the rug was more fun to chew on than her toys

She also gets herself up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth. Sometimes she'll move a hand or a knee forward, but hasn't figured out how to coordinate both going at the same time so then she winds up falling on her tummy.

Could be any day now that it all clicks. But really, she's already going all over the place so my wishes for immobility are already shot, so I won't push her over to keep her from crawling :)

*I wish I could say she reached a huge milestone with her sleep...but not. I think I mentioned in a post that right after I started her on solid foods she started instantly sleeping better at night, and she did for about 2 weeks solid. She was sleeping 8-9ish hours for those two weeks. But now the past 2 weeks have gone back downhill and she's been really consistently waking up after only 5.5-6 hours again. Ahhhhhhhhhhh. When we went in to the doctor for Landon's 2 year check up Friday I asked him about Layla's sleeping since he had told me to call if she wasn't sleeping 8-10 hours by the first of October. He told me to read Ferber's book about the progressive crying it out method and if I'm already doing all the things the book suggests that I should have a "tough love" couple of days and have someone else come stay with us to check on Layla during the night when she wakes up and just refuse to feed her until she gets the idea. I'm praying praying praying that she'll just figure things out on her own in the next few days because I'd really like to not do that :( 

It's not helping our cause that last night she came down with a cold and basically didn't sleep from midnight-5 am when I finally had Kyle bring her swing into her room to sleep in so she could be kind of upright. 

* There are also still no huge milestones in Layla & Landon's relationship, although we have made some baby steps. Mostly, she still loves and adores him, and he still dislikes her, usually.

Layla scoots to wherever Landon is and tries to play...

And he gets mad

This pic cracks me up bc it's so them...Layla happy to be with Landon, and Landon MAD that she's touching him!

However, just this past week Landon was actually nice to her for a change.

Every now and then he'll bend down and get right in her face and talk to her, or put her pacifier in her mouth, and it's very sweet...

...Till he tries to pick her up, push her over, or squish her. Game over.

And now, you get a photo dump of all the adorable pictures of Layla, because she's really beautiful, and really smiley! (and she has lots of cute clothes)

Cute even when she's mad!

Such cuteness!

And here they are, Landon & Layla side by side at seven months:

I still just can't get over how much chubbier Landon was than Layla. Although when she still didn't weigh as much at six months as he did at four months, it makes a big difference!

Also, look at this picture of Landon when he was almost 7 months old:

Look how much hair he had already!! What the?!?! I totally could have been clipping bows in his hair by this age. Layla, you need to grow some more hair, Girlfriend! Kidding...but seriously.

I love you Layla, and you are so beautiful no matter how much hair you have :)