8 (eight, osiem, ocho, huit) months

Penny-pot:

Sweet girl, you've got mama and daddy running around in circles after you this month. You've pulled so many new tricks out of your hat. You continue to be such a joy to us, you always make your needs known and there is so little guesswork when it comes to you.

Penny's new skills this month:

• Food: because two of the weeks this month we were battling some sickies, there hasn't been a whole lot of new foods introduced. She loves steamed pumpkin and asparagus. She's tried a bit of home made jam, cucumbers, bananas (still not a huge fan), she's played with a spaghetti noodle but didn't quite connect that it could be eaten as well.
• She started with scooting, then graduated to a few crawl-steps at a time, and now we're in full on crawl-sprint. She's even faster when uninhibited by clothes.
• She pulls herself up onto everything - she insists on being Queen of the Mountain. No matter how tall or short, she's got to be on top of it. I tested just putting a piece of paper on the floor and no surprise, Penny bee-lined to it and had to land that cute belly on top of it.
• In the last few days she's even shocked us when she simply chooses to let go.. luckily, that big fluffy butt of hers pads her fall ;)
•  She now loves to crawl around in the bath tub and splash with her hands. 
• In the middle of the month, her bottom two teeth broke though. I was so shocked because she didn't give us any indication that they were coming. She wasn't fussy or overly drooly. One afternoon, I let her taste some of our home made spiced pear jam from my finger and I felt something sharp.. I checked again and there were definitely some little white caps in there! It took about another two weeks for them to be visible above the gum line.
• Her sleep has varied a lot this month. In retrospect, I should have guessed that her teeth were bothering her. Normally she likes to sleep between mama and daddy, but doesn't really need either of our warmth. The couple weeks leading up to her teeth breaking through, she needed to be snuggled up to me or sleeping on top of me (which hasn't been a requirement from her for a very long time - I usually pull her onto me in the early morning for my sake). Now that her teeth have broken through and we seem to be in a lull between the next set, she's back to needing a bit of her own space. 
• You  might not see it in pictures, but her hair is starting to come in a lot more.. Maybe by her birthday I'll get to put it up with cute little hair clips?? Here's hoping...

We took her to a local park and found a swing set.. just couldn't resist! She had so much fun.

You might be noticing the super cute hat upon her noggin. Her crafty babcia whipped it up for her, it's a little giraffe hat. Just need to find the perfect buttons for its eyes.

I'm so especially excited for the coming months because the holidays are coming, which means getting to see the look of wonder in her eyes when she sees the Christmas tree lit for the first time, getting to try Thanksgiving turkey and getting to play with all of her cousins.