At seven months, Bridget is a chubby, smiley, growly, grabby, sometimes crabby, clingy, drooly, babbling, drooling baby who is the love of all our lives! She took off crawling during the last week in August, and now she can really get where she wants to go. Recently she's also started a funny half-crawl, half-sit kind of scoot. And as if crawling wasn't enough of a change, she also began pulling up on everything and cruising. The poor girl has a few bruises on her face from pulling a chair over on top of her, falling face-first into the piano bench leg, losing her grip when standing at the couch, etc.
Bridget weighed in at 18 lbs 4.2 oz at her six-month check-up in July. Like her siblings, she started small but has quickly gained in height and weight. Those Neuman genes ensure all my children will far surpass me in height, I think!
While Bridget loves to see and interact with her siblings, she definitely prefers to be held by Mama or Daddy. When I bring her out into the living room after a nap, she cranes her neck or tries to flip her body around to face the sibling ruckus and enjoys the attention they lavish on her. But if I place her in a sister or brother's lap, she squirms and looks at me plaintively and starts crying. Unless she is in a particularly good mood, she does her best to avoid being stuck with a sibling. However, since she's now mobile and can get herself into a sitting position from crawling, she is more content to be on the floor with siblings there to entertain or interact with her--just so long as they don't try to confine her to their laps!
Up until recently--and still if she's getting tired or I'm the only person around--when I set her down on the floor with toys, she immediately pats my leg or arm, sometimes also twisting around to get more of her body in my lap to make sure I'm not planning to leave her on the floor alone. She certainly likes to be with me.
She's interested in toys now (especially the big kids' toys that are typically off-limits for Bridget), but of course, everything goes in the mouth. She's gaining dexterity and fine motor skills, so she's started picking up small bits of paper to taste if she comes across them. Just a few weeks ago, it would take one of the kids distracting her with various toys (often hit obnoxiously together) so I could slip away without her crying. In this way I sometimes could use the bathroom, jot down a note, chop up an onion, do a few dishes, etc. Her clinginess is subsiding some with her ability to get places, though, and she can always crawl into the kitchen to claw and mouth my legs if she misses me too much.
Homeschooling has necessarily changed along with Bridget's development. Now she's more often content and occupied for a time with toys on the living room floor, whereas just a few weeks ago (back in the army-crawling dark ages) she hated being left on her own on the rug in the living room when the rest of us were at the dining room table. These days she'll come join us and gnaw on people's feet or get stuck under a chair if we're not vigilant. But if she's on my lap with all of us, she tries to grab and hit at every book, folder, sheet of paper, etc. She's strong and squirmy. I'm working to get her used to being in her high chair with some toys for a bit of time each day, working up to longer-lasting happy containment. She's funny and a lot of fun, of course, so the big kids love to have her around when we're trying to do school. She's also quite loud now! She likes to babble, squeal, grunt, growl, yell--not to mention cry--and it makes recitation or reading aloud a little tougher when she's there.
Bridget started truly babbling in August sometime--we hear lots and lots of "dadadada" and just some "bababa" or "mamama" or "nananana." If I ask her to say "Mama," she'll often respond, "Dadada." She likes to whisper "dadada" (so cute!) and will reply with it if someone says it to her. She also makes little questioning or attention-getting conversational noises that are just the cutest and sweetest. She loves to be noticed by the family (and others, on the rarer occasions we're around non-family members!).
Bridget's first bottom incisor came through in early August. Now the second one has cut through, and I can feel the other little sharpie when I rub her gum with my finger. Her bites carry more bite these days! She loves gnawing on carrots or celery or apple, but I know I need to be especially vigilant about her choking on a chunk as the teeth come in. We introduced Bridget to a variety of foods between five and seven months, but I wasn't as dedicated to feeding her as I was with the other kids. Just in the last couple weeks, she's taken off with eating regularly (daily mealtimes). Life always gets a bit more complicated when the baby needs to eat real food--not just nurse! So far she gags and makes awful faces at avocado and a puree of veggies (bell pepper, zucchini, cuc, carrot, chickpeas--I mean, I wouldn't really love to slurp it down, either). She loves oatmeal (run through the blender to make it a more palatable texture for her), mashed banana, watermelon, and carrots to suck/gnaw on. She tolerated a puree of carrots and chickpeas. She watches us like a hawk when we eat and don't offer her anything!
Having big-kid helpers is awesome!
She gets excited about eating and kicks her little feet out, shakes the chair, and hits the tray. We've practiced "no hands" in regards to grabbing the spoon as we feed her, and she's learned this rule pretty well. She certainly doesn't try to grab it often! When she's done, though, she's really done. She'll purse her lips, blow raspberries, pull away from the spoon, slap the tray, yell, etc. I'm trying to do at least a few baby signs and hope the "all done" and "more" signs stick sometime soonish.
Bridget has truly been such a joy to us--and what better time to have a baby than during pandemic quarantine! (I mean, I'm glad I had her before the pandemic, and we'd be thrilled with her all the same, pandemic or no. But the coronavirus pandemic has canceled so much that we've gotten to thoroughly enjoy her babyhood and allow her a consistent nap schedule).
Baby laughter is the best, and Bridget finds lots of things her siblings do so funny. She laughs and laughs at Clara's funny faces, Abby's peek-a-boo, Lydia's repeated crescendo of random phrases, and Josiah's tickling her toes.
