Renee Stelle: Alisa is 7 Months Old Today

Alisa's first solids after having rice cereal were fork-mashed avocados, bananas and sweet potatoes (introduced one at a time with a 3-day period between each one to make sure she didn't have any allergic reactions). She liked them all, though surprisingly I had to really water down the mashed bananas.

Rice cereal on her face:

Avocado on her face:

Daddy feeding her bananas and rice cereal:

Eating banana puffs:

She gained 1 lb this month--she went from 16 lbs 13 oz to 17 lbs 13 oz. She slept in the bassinet part of the Pack 'N Play in our room for the 1st half of the month because we had guests staying up in her room. Her first night upstairs in her crib (far away from Mommy and Daddy) was 10-25-07. She woke up at 12:30am (4 hours after going to bed) and needed to be comforted...she was back in her crib sound asleep half an hour later. The following nights in her crib were without incident. With the fall time change, she has been going to bed around 8 or 9 PM (used to be closer to 9:30 PM) and sleeps an average of 12 hours each night. She still takes 3 naps (30 minutes to 1 1/2 hours long) each day (she misses one occasionally).

Alisa loves playing with the fountain on our porch, though the water is very cold (10-09-07):

10-15-07 was the first day she was sitting up in her crib in the morning when I got up to get her. She was in the bassinet part of the Pack 'N Play so she was able to see all around the room. We kept telling ourselves that after our guests left the next week, we'd put her up in her room to sleep, but we liked having her in our room so much that we didn't make the change right away. What finally got us moving was that we had a couple of cold nights so our room was very cold in the morning (the bottom floor is 10 degrees colder than the top floor). Alisa's little hands were so cold that we decided we shouldn't delay the move. Also, if I didn't get up and get in the shower before she woke up and sat up, then I wouldn't be able to shower until later because I couldn't sneak by with her sitting up. Once she saw us, she'd persistently cry for us to get her out of bed. If she didn't see us, she'd happily talk and play with her feet for about half an hour.

By 10-21-07, she could stand holding onto coffee table or ottoman for a good while if you placed her there. Then her legs would start shaking and she had a scared look on her face that said "I'm tired of standing but I don't know what to do...I'm afraid to move."

On 11-01-07:

She started clucking her tongue on 10-22-07. We realized that we had been doing it a lot when trying to get her attention or make her laugh with funny noises. I was so proud and impressed that she figured out how to do that at such a young age!

On 10-26-07, she first did her version of the "downward dog" yoga pose (hands and feet on floor with legs straight and butt up in the air). She began to do it all the time, sometimes as a way of getting from her tummy to a sitting position. I found it to be so adorable and fun to watch when she did it repeatedly.

She started pulling herself up using things such as Craig's laundry basket and the coffee table on 10-27-07. Once she did that, she always wanted to be standing at the coffee table banging things on it.

Here she is about to pull herself up to a standing position (10-29-07):

She was a bumblebee for Halloween, though she ended up taking an unusually long nap that night so we didn't go anywhere. She had already worn her costume to the monthly playgroup and 2 other occasions.