3/4 of a Year

8 months ago, we welcomed our little Brielle into the world...it's so hard to believe she's 3/4 of the way through her first year.  She is definitely still in the baby stage, but it's not going to be long before my baby isn't a baby anymore.  Time is just going way too fast!  She's had lots happening this month, so here's a little recap:

• She babbles (or jabbers, as daycare tells me) a lot.  She mostly says strings of bababa and dadada, but we get a mamama every now and then.  
• She loves apples, pears, bananas, peas, carrots, tofu, rice, chicken, sweet potatoes, squash, mangoes and banana oatmeal.  Now that she's 8 months old we'll be introducing more fun foods for her to try.
• She can get a puff into her own mouth about 2 times out of 5.  She tries very hard, but still misses quite often.  Once she has this mastered, I think she'll have more fun feeding herself than eating from the spoon.
• She can army crawl like a champ.  She gets herself onto her hands and knees, rocks and looks around, then plops to her tummy and scoots off army style.  We know that some day soon she'll take off on those hands and knees!  Given this new mobility, we're working on baby proofing the house and we are realizing that we really have to keep a very close eye on her because she's quick when she wants to be.  
• She thinks the dog bones are her own personal teething toys...we're working on convincing her this is not the case.  We were worried about the dogs eating her toys, when apparently we should have been worried about her eating their toys!
• She now has four teeth, two on the bottom in the middle and two on the top, one on each side off-center.
• She doesn't really laugh much yet, she still likes to squeal, but I've gotten her to laugh a few times by blowing raspberries on her tummy and it's just about the sweetest sound I've ever heard!
• And, she's 17 1/2 pounds and probably about 28 inches, she's gonna be a tall girl :)

The photo shoot was more difficult this month, attempting to crawl and find things on the floor was more enticing than smiling for the camera :)