8 months

Here's a phone pic dump from the last month. I think this is .5% of the pictures I took in May.

Last time I saw my mom she gave me a few baby items that used to be mine. Mariah loves her new bib and sun hat. I think she wears them well.

Little puppy baby. The upside is that our floors stay really clean and crumb-free. The downside is that I've taught my baby to eat food off the floor. And that I had to fish a chunk of carpet out of her mouth last week. When we offer her food from our hands she mouths over the whole hand like a stingray until she sucks up the food.

This quickly turns into this:

(don't mind the food in her hair)

We went through a really awful biting phase a few weeks ago, and I almost weaned her because of it. After a week of her laughing in my face every time I said, "no biting", she eventually stopped, and so we carry on.

Hard to be mad at this smiley face though. She laughs at funny faces and silly voices I make; it is surprisingly gratifying to have an 8 month old laugh at your jokes.

A few weeks ago she started crawling, but since then she's mostly gone back to the army crawl and alternates between doing downward dog and planking.

Feeding, changing, and dressing her has become ridiculously difficult. I always stop and laugh at how hard I'm struggling to get her diaper on as she flips over and frantically tries to crawl off the changing table.

(I was holding on to her legs, don't worry)

 Not to mention the bad airplane impersonations I do to try to get a spoonful of food in her mouth while she aggressively blows spit bubbles to deny entrance into the hangar and yanks the spoon out of my hand.

Once she gets the spoon she peaces out on the whole gig and crawls out of her seat. We should probably get a real high chair.

Just in the last week she's starting to pull up on furniture and stand. This is her favorite place to practice standing, so when she gets up she can admire her reflection in the fireplace glass.

Yesterday I heard her fussing instead of falling asleep for her nap and I went in to find her standing in her crib. Yikes. Time to lower it, again.

We'd been putting her to bathe in the kitchen sink with a couple inches of water so she is contained and happy while we eat dinner standing next to her.

That lasted a couple weeks until she started standing up in there too. Luckily Matt caught her before she slipped. No more sink baths.

Her favorite word is dada. I'm really glad I have her saying "mama" on video from a month or so ago otherwise I'd be a liiiittle bummed. This morning I was saying, "mama" trying to get her to repeat it and she put her hands on both sides of my face and put her nose right up against mine and yelled, "DADADA." Okay, okay, I get it. You love your dad.

Mostly she likes to whisper, "Hidaaaa, hidaaa"

Other happenings from the last month:
Mariah had her first swing (above), first slide with Aunt Jenna, and first ride in the front of the shopping cart.

I think she was more excited about the shopping cart than the slide.

Once a week, I take her to play group at the park with some friends from our old ward. Lots of little kids, and a couple babies just a few months older than Mariah.

Sometimes during her naps I do weird things, like cut my hair. Then she wakes up and gives me her stamp of approval.

She ate this whole giant sweet potato over the course of a week. Atta girl.

She really likes feeding herself.

(How long can we get away with calling frozen lima bean puree a treat?)

New foods she likes have been puffed kamut, lima beans, onion, and honeydew melon. Overall, her favorite foods are apples, zucchini, and sweet potatoes.

She still loves being swaddled and sucking on binkies. I'm trying to be better about saving the binky for naps and bedtime, but I'm a pushover.

I gave her this little abacus to play with and she is obviously a genius.

I found her like this earlier today, calculating how long until her next feeding.