7 months!

Our little man is already 7 months old! We've had a pretty eventful past month and Alden grows and grows a little more every day. We are amazed at how quickly life is changing with a mobile baby and we are loving every second of watching our little one grow and change :) 

I have been seriously slacking with the blog lately but will try to catch up in the next couple of weeks. There's a lot to talk about: baby sensory classes at a local shop, a new diet in the house, my family's birthday visit to Athens, etc.! 

*I just noticed that I never posted his 6 month update! We took our monthly photos and I wrote up most of the post, I just never hit publish :/ I'll make sure to update it and post it soon! 

For now, I'll leave you with our 7 month recap and some really cute photos :) 

Alden is now army crawling like a champ, pulling up on anything he can get his hands on, and trying to stand ALL THE TIME. He started out army crawling by pulling himself forward with his arms while sliding on his tummy, not a whole lot of leg action in the beginning but now he full on army crawls like a little soldier, legs and arms moving together. He's got the movement down for crawling, he just has to pick his tummy up off the floor and he'll be off to the races! Nick and I joke that he was so motivated to start some kind of movement (hence the somewhat early "crawling") but now that he can get around easily, he has no motivation to truly crawl :) He is incredibly fast on his tummy and since he's obsessed with pulling up and standing lately, I'm actually starting to think he'll never really crawl. Maybe he's like his Mama, impatient for the next thing to start so he just jumps right in :) 

army crawling right out the door! 

He loves to pick things up and examine them and chew on them. Everything that's within his reach is either knocked over, rolled around on the floor, or in his mouth. Most of the time it's all three :) He is still keenly interested in his environment and will stare the pants off of people in the grocery store. He is obviously a curious, interested, little observer. Or, as Nick's Aunt Marianne calls him, our Little Professor ;) He amazes me with how deliberate and intelligent his actions are, even at 7 months old. 

We introduced a sippy cup about a month ago and Alden has always much preferred to play with them than drink out of them. He really enjoyed having something that was his size and that he could chew on, but he never really made the connection between the action he uses to drink out of his bottle and drinking out of the sippy. Then, last weekend, Nick was drinking a glass of water and Alden was very interested in the glass. Nick gave him a drink out of the cup and Alden took to it so much better than he had ever taken to the sippy. Now, we just give him a cup at meal times and, with help, he drinks his water that way. It's like he didn't have the patience to mess with the sippy cup and was ready to just drink out of a regular cup :) He has his own little Klean Kanteen sippy and he really loves drinking out of it without the lid- so much so that he grabs mine and tries to get a sip! 

Alden has gotten very vocal and seems to be babbling, screeching, or squealing all the time. He loves to make little raspberry noises with his mouth and giggles when we imitate him :) He can clearly say many letter sounds, like ma, da, ba, and ga and he does his little monkey noise (oo oo oo) when he wants to eat or is excited. 

He has so much personality and we see a little more of it every week. It takes him a few minutes to acclimate to a new environment and will stay close to me and be very quiet until he feels comfortable. But, boy, when he gets comfortable, he really goes all out! Before you know it he's on the other side of the room trying to crawl up into a stranger's lap :) He flirts and plays shy with people, especially women, all the time and has a tendency to pull glasses off of people's faces. 

He has three teeth, the two bottom and his left lateral incisor (the tooth between the front and the canine). Supposedly, baby teeth erupt in a predictable pattern: bottom two central incisors, top two central incisors, top lateral incisors, bottom lateral incisors, etc. Well, just another thing to put on the list of "every baby is different" :) Alden got his bottom two teeth first and then got the top lateral incisor next, even though that one shouldn't come in until he's 9-12 months old...we're thinking maybe he should be Dracula for Halloween ;) 

Here are a few photos of what we've been up to lately with the little man:

playing with Mama's old stacking boxes

crawling around with a pan on my head at school :) haha!

1st time at The Varsity! 

learning how to stand up in my crib

1st bath in the big tub

Daddy and Alden match! :) 

1st time in a highchair at a restaurant! He was beautifully behaved the whole time :) So much so that the manager complimented us on how great he was! 

Happy 7 months, my sweet boy! 

much love, L&N