The 7th month March.

It's hard to believe that mon petit ninja is already 7 months old. Veda continues to thrive in all the ways a typical 7 month old would. Her phase of shrieking like a bludgeoned parrot have given way to hourly babbles of mamamama and dadadada. Not to mention blugberb, glubob, and something that sounds an awful lot like Iowaaaaa. Life seems quite enjoyable to Veda, at least if the ease at which she laughs and smiles is any indication. She's learning how to wave 'hi' and 'bye', and although she can't quite get her hand to open and shut in a proper wave, it's clear that she finds the whole premise hilarious. In fact, she has recently noticed that her arms can communicate other things; banging the high chair tray means "give me more NOW", arms flapping up and down like she's fanning a fire mean "I'm excited!", and rotating her wrist in isolation of the rest of her arm means... well we're not really sure what that one means, but we think it means, "look, I have wrists!"

Mealtime is fun stuff, in fact she has begun eating 2 meals a day and we often have to mix up a little more to satisfy her appetite. Her favorite is still avocado, but she's also enjoying squash, sweet potato, pears, and organic brown rice cereal. She appears quite proud that she can drink out of a big girl cup (with help of course), as she shunned the bottle some weeks ago. She is now semi-mobile. If we plop her down on the floor, she'll definitely end up several feet from where she began. Typically by way of backward sliding, simple butt scooching, or just random body creeping. She's desperately trying to get on all fours, but there's some reluctance to put weight on those knees. She's a big fan of standing and holding onto furniture, as pictured below. No pulling up yet, but you can tell she's beginning to consider the option.

All in all, we're closing out winter in good fashion. Shay recently accepted a postdoctoral fellowship offer with UW Health and Access Community Health to begin in August, and Clark accepted a new web developer position with alice.com to begin at the end of March. It's all very bittersweet, but I will save that for a future post. For now, more pics of our big girl.