"Ah! Ah!" She Says...

Laurel has become more assertive in the last few weeks. She balls up her little hands, tenses all her muscles and grunt-yells "ah! ah!" when she sees something she finds interesting (like a dog), or that she wants (like a toy that is across the room). She's always looking around trying to make eye contact with people when we go out in public. Her legs churn like crazy when we try to hold her. She's made some progress with crawling recently, but more often than not is only successful at spinning or rolling herself in a circle, instead of making any kind of linear progress. Although, I did see her army crawl across our bed this afternoon, bound and determined to reach her prize - which turned out to be the string on Mark's Pacman pajamas.

She had something of a temper tantrum a few days ago, which gave me a glimpse into some of the potential challenges future parenting will bring us. I was eating an apple and I let her have a taste of it. However, then I realized that her extremely sharp lower teeth allowed her to bite off pretty big chunks, which I was afraid she would choke on. So I took the apple away. If you were one of the people at our adjoining campsites you would have thought that I had chopped off her toes with a dull knife. Or perhaps stabbed her in the eye with a blunt object. That's how hard and loud and hysterically she cried. We tried giving her another toy to play with but she glared at me for a while. Of course she was back to her happy little self a short time later, but I am telling you...that girl has no middle ground. She is either exuberantly embracing life, or she's pissed as all get out.

We are working on the house a bit, trying to get it ready for her as she becomes more mobile. Today I realized, I'm going to have to retire the bouncy chair for a while as she's now strong enough to sit up and lean over the edge. It's only a matter of time before she flips it.

I cannot believe we have an almost-seven month old.