8 months!

So we have an 8 month old... still weird to hear. But we are loving this stage! We're getting sleep and she's hitting some fun milestones! She is so much fun to be around.

 She's crawling!! For a few weeks, she was getting up on her knees, but didn't know what to do from there. She would rock, get up on her tiptoes and make a pyramid (which she still likes to do), or face plant but last week she actually got the hang of moving her hands in coordination with her knees! She doesn't crawl fast, but she gets around and into everything that's on the floor! Her favorite is crawling to the corner of the living room with the cables & cords. She loves playing with them and hates when we constantly take them away. Time to baby proof the apartment!

She has finally gotten the hang of how a sippy cup works. For the longest time she would just chomp on the spout, not realizing she could suck & get water. She also has started feeding herself rice puffs because she can use her finger and thumb to pick them up. It's cute when the puff gets caught in her palm because she has a hard time getting it to her mouth.  We recently got a high chair. We found a used one on campus for a really great price and we're loving it. She can make her mess in her own space instead of on the table, it's safer than the bumbo on the table, and it reclines so she can hold her own bottle.

She still sleeps in the craziest ways:

We discovered a few 6-9 month outfits that my mom sent months ago and we're loving them!! They are our favorite outfits of hers thus far.

Her hippie outfit (Tyron's fav!); can tell dad put her bow on!

We usually give Auralia a bath in her baby chair, but Tyron wanted her to get more wet and used to being in water. So he put on his trunks and they played in the bath! It was cute watching them play with rubber duckies and splash around. She seemed to love it, besides when she felt like her face was getting a little too close to water and then she'd make this panicked, heavy panting noise.

 

Life is good! We have finally adjusted to living in the Bronx. We're used to the constant sound of sirens & honking as well as trash, homeless people, being a minority, and getting around. A few weeks ago, we used our tax return and bought a car!! It has made a world of difference! We can get to so many more places than we could before and we can get to places a lot faster. Driving here is NUTS! People double park here all the time so you'll be driving in the right lane and a car will be parked there so you have to slam on your brakes and get over. And the taxi's and buses are fearless; so are most of the native new yorkers. People have no problem cutting you off (and when you don't let them honking & screaming at you), using an oncoming traffic lane to pass someone they don't think is going fast enough, or coming up to your window and banging on it to scream at you. So, that's been real fun. But I'm still so grateful for a car!

Carmen the Camry!