She's 7 months old...

Eliana's hair gets longer and longer every week. And it defies gravity or any attempts to comb it flat.

Eliana's Aunt Jenny visited from Denver this weekend. Eliana was so glad to see her!If you look closely, you can see two little tears running down her face. Although Eliana has some stranger anxiety still, she did get used to her Aunt Jenny.

When Eliana was using her sippy cup, she didn't know to tip the cup and so she would end up taking gulps of air. So we got her a sippy cup with a straw. She loves drinking water...

And then there's eating... she loves eating and likes to stuff her face, but remember that she doesn't like mushy food. So she sticks to things that are truly solid with the occasional slice of banana. If you put it in front of her, she'll eat it (sort of like her father.)

Eliana is definitely right handed and will do all of her food grabbing with her right hand. In between mouthfuls of food, though, she'll run her slimy right hand through her hair. So her hair gets a coat of saliva mixed with dissolved Cheerios every night.

And last but not least, here's Eliana making high-pitched bird noises and acting like a wriggly worm just before her usual bedtime around 11pm (no, that's not a typo; we've found that if we put her to bed after 11pm, she'll sleep straight through the whole night, usually till about 7:30).

Seven months now...

We are starting to figure out what solids Eliana will eat. Eliana will not eat rice cereal, or oatmeal, or bananas. Then Emily's mom told us that when Emily was a baby, she did not like mushy foods. So it seems like Eliana has inherited her mother's aversion to mushy things. So we give her Cheerios and animal crackers for her to suck on and eat. And no more mushy foods for Eliana. And she has only recently been able to pick up small objects with her thumb and index finger.Or one can forgo the opposeable thumb thing altogether and pick up a Cheerios cereal between two fingers. To help her become more wordly, we've started Eliana on soccer practice already. She loves it!

She's getting better and better at flipping herself over from her back to her tummy and back again. She'll swing her leg out and use the weight of her leg to leverage herself over. Interestingly, she'll only do this with her right leg, never with her left. She must be right legged.

She's also good at the baby equivalent of push-ups. Between this and rolling over, we've realized that we need to start baby proofing the house as she'll be crawling very soon.

And last but not least, Eliana likes to make a funny face by crinkling up her nose and breathing in and out really loudly.

Learning new things...

Eliana had a very full weekend. Ye ye and nai nai (grandparents) visited from California to spend time with her. They commented on how much heavier and taller she has grown since Christmas, when they last saw her.

She is also getting much better at rolling around. One can't plop her down on her play mat, go do something else, and come back expecting her to be in the same place. Before, she was rolling from her back to her tummy by accident. Now, it's by choice.

And she has learned how to splash during bath time. This makes it fun for Mommy, who often has to change clothes after giving Eliana a bath.

Manual dexterity...

Eliana gets better with her hands every week. She now uses her thumbs as opposable thumbs like they're designed to be. And she can move an object from one hand to another. Now, she can even turn an object over in her hands to see what's on the backside of it. Watch....

Little teeth...

Eliana's first two little teeth sprouted a couple of weeks ago. As we mentioned, she didn't seem too bothered by the whole thing, which suits us fine. Since we still let her suck on our pinky finger at times, we've been trying to teach her not to bite down. It's something that she must instintively know, as she sucks on her own fingers too.

Anyway, her little teeth are now big enough that they show when she smiles. The toothless grin is disappearing...