8 Months!

Miss Madeline turned 8 months old last week.  She has grown so much; it's crazy to look back at pictures and see how small she once was.  She has become so much more interactive during this past month.  Here are some things that Madeline is doing at 8 months:

• Is crawling!  A week before she turned 8 months she started crawling forwards (she started crawling backwards a couple days prior to that).  The first few days she would only do it if she really, really wanted something, but there's no stopping her now.  She's all over the place, and she's already gotten so much faster.  It's so fun watching her explore.
• Started saying syllables (e.g. ba, da, etc.).  
• Loves to blow spit bubbles.  This is especially fun while I'm feeding her.
• Loves food.  It doesn't really matter what kind of food.  Squash and yogurt are at the top of her list though.
• Loves to drink water.  She gets so excited when she sees her sippy cup, or any cup for that matter.
• Is starting to mimic us more and more.
• Is close to pulling herself to a stand.  She pulls herself to her knees, but can't quite get up to her feet yet.  This makes her really frustrated.  
• Has gotten more opinionated than ever.  And gets furious if she wants something and can't have it.
• Has started to take off her diaper.  Luckily she only does this when on the changing table.  But, she does it EVERY time she's on the changing table.  She always looks at us square in the eye, smirks, then rips off the velcro part.  What a stinker.
• Explores new textures with her pointer finger only.
• Unfortunately has turned into a sporadic sleeper.  Some nights she'll go 10 hours straight without waking, other nights she'll wake up every 5.  We're working on it.
• Is our little multi-tasker.  While playing she often holds one toy in her mouth and one in each hand.
• Can't stack blocks, but is quite good at knocking them over.
• Is pretty much perfect.

And for your viewing pleasure, two videos of Madeline.  The first is her crawling backwards and "talking," the second is her crawling to her blocks to knock them over.