8 months old

She's eight months old, and just about officially army-crawling!  (Still not very fast, though!)

Still no teeth, either.  :)

She's a little babbler now!  She has said "ya" and "ga," but she really loves saying "ba ba ba!"

She's sleeping a bit better, too, thanks to some nighttime help from Daddy.  

Other than that, she's round and roly and blue eyed and getting some more very blond hair!  And nursing is still her favorite.  :)

Someone else is still two-and-a-half, as far as she knows (though she's nearly two-and-three-quarters, to be precise!).  She is learning like a little sponge!  I taught her to sing "Happy Birthday" while she washes her hands, and now she goes around the house "singing" it all the time (though "birthday" sounds more like "burping").  :)  John taught her that when she has her next birthday, she'll be three.  So, now, she says "Soon it will be my burping.  I will be free!"  One time, I casually remarked that maybe we will have a Little Bear party, so now--without fail--she addends "we will have a yiyyo Bo burping!"  I'd better follow through on that!

When I say "singing," I don't mean that she has found different pitches yet.  Here's to hoping she eventually does.  :)  But even her monotone singing is darling because she bellows deeply and seriously and still mispronounces most of the words!  Some of her favorites besides Happy Birthday are Holy, Holy, Holy and the B-I-B-L-E, which she learned in Sunday School.  She's also picking up on songs we haven't explicitly taught her, like one of the songs from her Rain for Roots album, and the closing line from the Sovereign Grace song "I have a shelter in the storm"--she surprised John one day by bellowing "take me home to heaven!" for the first time.

She's also turning summersaults!  We have no idea where she learned that!

Gemma would be thrilled if Ruthie would rough-house with her.  Despite these pictures of them sitting calmly side-by-side, Gemma now frequently comes up behind Ruth and puts her arms around her (darling!) and then tries to pull her back and roll around.  As long as she's gentle, Ruth loves it.  There's hardly anything sweeter to a mommy than to see her girlies grinning at each other!

It's gotten a bit easier to take them both grocery shopping now that Ruth doesn't automatically fall asleep when I'm wearing her!  We try to stay home for naps, since she hardly sleeps in her infant seat anymore.  Gemma can sit in the cart and she can be on my chest, and there's plenty of room in the cart for food.  No one wants to lug around an infant seat with an 18lb+ baby in it!

In other news, we're on our third cold of the summer . . . and that's all I have to say about that!