Standing

Grandma walked into Mae's room and discovered a little girl giggling and standing. She pulled herself up all by herself and was loving it! Good thing we moved the mattress lower last week.

7 months

This past month Mae has really mastered sitting by herself and crawling. She was sitting by herself earlier but we never went too far as she could just all of a sudden fall back and wack her head on the ground. Now she will be playing with a toy lying down, and then sit herself up to play with it more. When she is done, she looks around, lies back down and crawls to the next toy and repeats. Her crawl is a mixture of hands & knees (proper crawling) and just shoving herself forward with her feet. She also has 3 teeth in and SCREAMMSSSS (high pitch, realllllly loud) when she is playing happily. I was attempting a nap the other day with a ceiling fan on, earplugs in and a pillow over my head and was still woken with her happy screeches from the front room where she was playing with her toys. They are just so high pitched!!

Pooltime

Sam and I still haven't braved the pool (I prefer not to get in till the water is 90) but Benjamin and Grandma have been swimming nearly every day since she arrived (2.5 weeks ago). Mae started joining them this past week and has been loving the pool too!

Disneyland

We surprised Benjamin with a 2 day trip to Disneyland. Unfortunately he got really sick (104F fever, puking) 2 nights before we left and while he was better by the time we left - he still wasn't 100%. Our 1st day at the park he didn't want to eat much and fell asleep at lunchtime for 45min lying across 3 chairs, with his head on my lap - and a train driving by every 20 min! If there are 2 things we are guaranteed about Ben is that he will eat all day long and he does NOT nap, even after an entire day of skiing! He still loved it, though, and I think it really was a blessing as the 2nd day he was completely back to himself and wore us out!

His favorite rides were the scary/rough rides - tower of terror, space mountain (that 1 made me want to puke from how rough it was and no way I was going on it twice!), matterhorn bobsled, pretty much any rollercoaster or ride that made your stomach drop. Thanks to Mae being too short, and Benjamin being just right (42" were most of the cutoffs for these and he's 43") he was able to do all his "scary rides" twice as we would get a child swap pass. Whoever stayed back with Mae would then go and ride it with Ben with almost no wait (entering through the exit or fast pass lanes depending on the ride). The story rides (e.g. Peter pan, alice in wonderland, etc) turned out to be Mae's favorite and she would just constantly turn her head during the ride so she could look at everything.
This next 1 is a picture of the picture they take of you on the tower of terror. I really think that was Ben's favorite ride and mostly because everyone screams.

Mae - 6 Months

Our little girl measured 27.25" (95%) tall and weighed 15.4lbs (25-50%) at her 6 month appointment. She also got 2 of her bottom teeth shortly before she turned 6 month - and wow was that drama!! For a girl that is generally pretty happy and easy going - she let us know how miserable she was to get those teeth in. She rolls everywhere and scoots herself backwards, which is funny as she then gets all mad as she moves herself farther away from the item she was trying to reach instead of closer. And her big brother STILL absolutely adores her.

April

April was a quieter month. It started off with fairy tale week at Bens school (with a parade by the kids - if I could figure out how to shrink my videos I have the cutest video of it!!!). Ben decided to be 1 of the pigs from the 3 little pigs as this is his absolute favorite story. On quiet days we sit and repeatedly tell different versions of it (e.g. 3 little giraffes that built their house from blinds, trees and lego)
At the end of the week they had a carnival at his school.
Mae has also moved on to various solids and Benjamin has been wonderful at helping me feed her. He shows her how to open her mouth wide and then is very slow and precise at trying to get all the food in.
Mae also started sitting up by herself for longer periods of time.
Grandma arrived towards the end of the month for her 6 week visit - YIPPEEEEEEE!!!
And we ended the month with Easter. Ben's Easter bunny left him 1 chocolate and a little 'clue' in each egg which then directed him to a Transformer book on his bed.

March

Well it's now May and I still haven't finished posting March activities so here are the rest of them:
We did a family outing to Arizona CityFest where Benjamin got to meet the Veggie Tales.
He was all into posing with characters so he wanted me to take his picture with the chick-fil-e cows too (although he had no idea who they were :) )
We enjoyed a playdate at the AZ Museum for Youth with Ben's good friend Nathan. They had a wonderful fairy tale exhibit going on!
Then there was another playdate with Pierce- this time at a bounce house place.
And while hanging out at home there was a lot of dress up time!

And just hanging out...