6 month stats:
Height: 27 in
Weight: 16 lbs. 3 oz
Head: 42 cm
7 month stats:
Weight: 16 lbs. 13 oz.
Milestones: CRAWLING, pulling to standing, and First Tooth. Brooke's favorite foods are avocados and sweet potatoes, but she also eats apples, apricots, bananas, peas, and plain greek yogurt. This week we're trying cottage cheese. Brooke is a great eater! Other than a possible allergy to plums, we haven't had any issues with eating solids. She's getting better at feeding herself and has started to pick foods up with her little fingers. Tater tots have been most successful. We may try tofu cubes soon.
It's kind of hard to see but that little white spot on her lower gums is her first tooth!! It's so cute and she uses her tongue to feel it. She seemed to fair pretty well with getting this tooth. We didn't notice any increase in fussiness, but to be honest, we were in the airport when we noticed the tooth. So her fussiness may have been masked by travel as we returned from Alaska. We'll see how she does with tooth #2.
Practicing her pulling to standing on the dishwasher. Probably not the safest place, but since she started crawling non-stop a few weeks ago, we've been pretty vigilant with watching her.
She's a curious one and now wants to get into EVERYTHING.
We went to Indiana in early July and visited with all our IU friends. Turns out we are quite a productive bunch of doctoral students. Three babies out of this cohort...and another one to join the group this fall (not pictured here). It was great fun to see everyone and it made us miss all our friends.
This is Derek, our next door neighbor from Indiana. He was born 2 days after Brooke. This was shortly after Brooke learned to sit unassisted.
While in Indiana, we celebrated with our friends Nikki and Kasey at their wedding. They had a little place setting for Brooke. It was precious! Of course, Jeff had to get another daddy/daughter dance in. Everyone at our table was teary eyed watching it. :-)
This little girl is just so sweet. Smiles for miles with a great personality. She is definitely starting to exert some independence and self-determination. She has never really liked having her diaper changed or getting dressed, but now she is much more emphatic in letting us know about it.
Sleeping is going great, both naptime and night time. While I wasn't much a fan of sleep training earlier this summer, I'm so glad we did it. Brooke consistently takes 3 naps a day in her crib and sleeps 12ish hours at night, getting up once to eat. While we were traveling, she even took a nap in someone else's crib for 2 hours!! Jeff doesn't think this is a big deal...but I do.
Brooke loves her daddy and loves playing at the park.
It was pretty hot while we were in Utah and rather than trek out to the pool at the rec. center, we had a makeshift pool in a bucket on the lawn. Brooke had lots of fun.
Brooke loves water and will play in it wherever it is. Irrigation ditch, bathtub, swimming pool, or even a puddle of pee on the floor...which has happened frequently this summer at home.
We visited my brother and his family while they were camping near Park City. It was a beautiful day and a perfect one to play in the lake. We weren't totally prepared and didn't have a bathing suit, but that didn't stop Brooke from having tons of fun anyways!!
Hanging out with Uncle Andy in the lake.
There is a shiny new rec. center in Provo so we had to visit. We floated around in the very crowded lazy river and played in the water fountains. We even went down a kids water slide, but then got yelled at by the lifeguard. Apparently babies aren't allowed on the slides.
We went to Jump On It in Lindon with my brother and the family and Grandma Peggy. Brooke was very curious about the bouncy floors. We even jumped a little bit on the kids trampolines. She seemed to have fun here, especially watching everyone else jump around and do tricks. It's been quite a long time since I jumped on a trampoline, and both my brother and I were feeling our ages a little more than we wanted to.
After the trampolines we just had to ride the carousel. Thanks to cousin Jonathan for holding the Brookester on her horse.
At the end of July we went on a cruise through the inside passage of Alaska with Jeff's parents and his aunt, uncle, and cousins. I also got a new DSLR camera a little early for my birthday (thanks mom!!). A trip to Alaska was the perfect place to test it out. What follows were my attempts at being more than a point and shoot photographer. Between Brooke and the Alaskan landscape, we had more than enough to work with.
Here are a few pictures from our first formal night on the ship. Unfortunately, our dinner time was right at Brooke's bed time, so we only ate in the dining room a few times. But we did get dressed up and Brooke was cute in her sailor dress. There was a life size chess set on the lido deck and Brooke had fun playing with the pieces that were almost exactly the same size as she was. The cruise line provided us with a pack and play for Brooke and our stateroom attendant made her little bed every night. He would put all her toys on the pillow for her. It was very cute.
We should have taken a cue from this that Brooke was about to get a tooth. We really didn't see it coming though. Brooke got to hang out with Grandma Townsend a lot on this cruise. She sure does love her. While we were in Ketchikan, we saw the salmon swimming up the river to spawn. There were literally hundreds of them in the river. Brooke hung out in the backpack on many of our shore excursions.
In Juneau, Jeff, his dad, and I kayaked out to Mendenhall Glacier. We got about 200 yards away from it. It was HUGE and there was a river flowing out from underneath it. We also kayaked right up to a couple of icebergs that had broken off from it. Nugget Falls is a large waterfall that flows just a few hundred yards down from the glacier. They said the water is so cold you would only last about 15 minutes before your body started to shut down.
In Skagway, we went on a couple mile hike to the Goldrush cemetery and Reid Falls. Brooke enjoyed the stroll through town to the cemetery. She seems to really like the backpack and slept in in the whole way back to the ship.
Crawling, crawling, crawling. That's all she wanted to do on this ship. The nice thing about going through the inside passage of Alaska is that we weren't in open ocean until the last day, so the ship wasn't rocking very much. This made it easier for Brooke to practice her crawling. The last day steaming to Seward was in open ocean and the ship was rocking much more. Brooke didn't seem to mind, and even liked playing in the pool water that was splashing out of the pool onto the lido deck.
In Glacier Bay National Park, we saw LOTS of glaciers, some of them even calved massive chunks off while we were there. We saw some whales, but they didn't breach the surface very much so most of our pictures are just of their water spouts. While we were in Glacier Bay, we had to rescue a ship that broke down. We took about 100 extra passengers onto our ship and dropped them off later that night at their original port. It was kind of interesting to be part of a rescue. We even made it into the National Park Service news releases.
Brooke tried lots of new things on this trip, including lemons! She didn't make any funny faces with it, but seemed to like it a lot. She also wants to drink out of cups now. She's not the best at it so we got her a sippy cup. Her hair is growing in slow and steady.
After the cruise, a few of our friends who live in Anchorage took us fishing at the confluence of the Kenai and Russian rivers. Both Jeff and his Dad snagged salmon, but unfortunately we couldn't keep them because they got snagged in the back and the fins. If it's in the mouth, it a keeper. Otherwise you have to throw it back. Brooke enjoyed hanging out with Grandma while we all fished. The picture on the bottom is one of my all-time favorites of her. She makes some pretty funny faces but we rarely catch them on camera.
This was a very busy month and it seems that Brooke grew up a TON while we were traveling. Brooke, we love how much you grow and change everyday. It keeps us on our toes. One of our favorite things to do is just sit and watch you play, explore, and learn. There have been times where you couldn't do something in the morning, but after your mid-day nap, you miraculously were able to do it. We are excited about your new found mobility. Wherever we go, we know you are crawling close behind. When we walk around, you stare at us with a sense of awe. We can see that you want to be walking with us. You had so much fun meeting new family members this month. They sure love you and can't wait to see you again. Your personality continues to emerge and this week you have really been asserting yourself. While we are super excited about all these changes, we are sad that you are growing up so fast. Before we know it, you aren't going to be our little girl anymore.
We love you Brooke!
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