8 Months!

These are blurry because she was moving around so much, but I had to post them because she's so happy in them!

Ayla is 8-months old today...unbelievable. I always think about future events and say, "Wow, she'll be x amount of months by then," and before I know it, it's here. I catch myself just staring at her and wondering how she has gotten so big, so quickly.

She is a determined little girl, that's for sure. If there's a toy she has her eye on, she will do everything in her power to get it. It usually leads to frustration, but at least she's trying! She's not crawling yet, but she wants to...when she gets herself up onto her knees, she usually just tips over. :) Instead, she pushes herself with her arms and ends up going backwards.

She now protests...quite strongly, I might add, when she has something taken away from her. Her hands are so quick. She snatches things in a blink of an eye. The harder we try to pry whatever it is out of her little hands, the harder she grips onto them. It takes some trickery to make sure she doesn't go to bed with my sunglasses.

Has anyone noticed how kids only want to play with things that aren't toys? Ayla has a mountain of colorful, crinkly, jingly, musical, beepy fun, yet she'd rather play with...a piece of cardboard and a koozie. I don't get it. We try to get her to play with an actual toy by pretending to use it (like she can't have it) but so far, she's been too smart for that. Shoot. She's on to us. I told Dean that I was just going to go to the dollar section at SuperTarget and buy a bunch of random junk for her to play with.

Getting her dressed everyday is like WWF. Her pajamas are especially difficult...the person who decided 29 buttons on one article of baby clothing was a good idea must not have had children. She squirms, waves her arms, kicks, and rolls all over the place...same goes for diaper changes. Unless she's sleeping, she doesn't like to be laying down. I can't imagine when she starts crawling and scrambles away from me with her naked little butt. :)

We've been teaching her how to wave 'bye-bye.' She doesn't do it everytime, but when she does, she flings her arm back and forth. We're also working on clapping but it hasn't quite caught on yet.

Mealtime is touch-and-go...sometimes she eats so much it surprises me and other times, she won't take more than a few bites before she turns her head and refuses. We've been letting her try little bits of regular food...so far she really likes bread and cheese. And why wouldn't she if she's my daughter? :)

She flirts! It's the cutest thing I've ever seen (maybe Dean doesn't think so...especially if she's still doing it in 15 years.) She does it most often with her Uncle Ping. All he does is smile at her and she smiles back and stares at him over her shoulder. And then the kicker, she bats her eyes and turns away. She does it over and over again. It's so funny! I need to get it on video...

Unfortunately, she is a little under-the-weather right now...we almost made it to eight whole months without getting sick, but she woke up yesterday morning with a really runny/stuffy nose. She sneezed all day so I had to wrestle her with Kleenexes and booger suckers. She hates getting her face wiped off so every time I had her almost all the way cleared up, she'd really start to get upset and cry, thus creating even more snot so we would have to start the process all over again. Poor little thing. I hate that she doesn't feel well, but honestly, besides her nose and a slight cough, she didn't seem to be too bothered by it; just a few random bouts of fussiness here and there...but she's entitled. Today she seems to be about the same...I just hope she doesn't get any worse. No fever though, so that's good.

Besides that, she's doing great! Growing, eating, learning, and laughing everyday...can't get any better than that.