8 months old!

Miss Molly is now 8 months old. As you can see from recent videos she is now crawling. I don't let her roam the hardwood floors at home so her practice time is still limited. She mainly scoots around her room at home on the quilt I have over her area rug or on carpet when visiting her grandmas. There's not as much open space in her room so she doesn't really get going, but I'm ok with that. You can see her try and stand up as opposed to crawl so I know it's only a matter of time before my entire day is going to be spent chasing her around. As long as she's still content to sit and play with a toy I'm not going to push it. It will happen soon enough.

One thing I haven't been able to catch on video is her ability to get herself into a sitting position. She's actually been doing it for quite some time now, but whenever I pull out the camera to catch it she just lays on her back and looks at me. Little stinker! Molly can go from on her back to her side to sitting and then back again no problem. She hasn't started pulling herself up on furniture yet, be you can see her try to get up on her feet from the crawling position and then topple over. Once she figures out to use furniture as an assist it will only be a matter of time before she's walking. Poor dogs! I can see tails being used as "helpers" in the not so distant future.

No more new teeth yet, but the bottom two are coming in nicely. There have been a few times where she wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, but nothing too bad. The one downside to this whole teething thing is the red splotchy patches on her cheeks and chin. Her drool is really irritating her and I've been putting petroleum jelly on before she goes to bed (which helps a little), but nothing seems to make it go away completely. I hope her silky smooth cheeks aren't gone for good.

Molly is pretty good with the waving goodbye. She takes a minute, but eventually will wave back. She's actually pretty good at imitating anything you teach her if she has enough time to study it and think it through. Of course it's usually the second you give up and turn your back that she'll do it, but hey... isn't that always the case?

Swim lessons have been great. This past week we were the only ones in class so she got some private lessons in. The one thing we're trying to get her to do is blow bubbles. This will help prevent her from swallowing a bunch of water when she goes under. She watches the instructor intently and a few times she has dipped her mouth into the water and blown a raspberry, but it's still something she's warming up to. However, she is completely comfortable in the water and has no problem going from her stomach to her back to having her ears under water to going completely under water. She might cough and sputter a bit if she swallows some water, but never upset.

We've also both agreed that Molly's first word is mum. She has greeted me with an excited mum on several occasions when I've walked into the room so it's been said in context. She's been doing the mum mum mum chant for a while now, but now it's definitely for me (as she swings her head around looking for me). When N goes in to check on her at night if she's fussing she'll call out for me and look around at every little sound to see if I'm coming. Since I do spend the most time with her she has been turning into a bit of a mama's girl. We've tried to nip this in the bud, but sometimes if I can get her down easy I'll do that as opposed to the hard way. Usually this happens if we're out and about (or up at the cabin with a little one in the room next door). If we're home we'll let her cry it out and deal. Tough love baby, tough love.