8 months

Dixie's little personality is showing through more and more each day. She has a very determined little spirit. She is mobile now, she started crawling right at 8 months and is doing a modified crawl using the right side of her body to push and the left side to balance. She crawls over things, under things and often gets stuck behind the elliptical machine. She loves the many many cords we have, and always finds new treasures in the carpet which go directly to her mouth. I keep a pretty close eye on her and have rescued her from the many pennies, material scraps, leafs and other debris that she finds. We've been pretty diligent about vacuuming every day now (a chore that we used to only do once a week), because if it is there, Dixie will find it and eat it. I wonder what she has eaten that I haven't caught?

Here are a few things my girl is up to these days:

Dixie is scared of the vaccume cleaner. Its really the cutest thing ever- whenever i am vacuuming she gets very wide eyed and makes a little whimpering sound until i rescue her.

Dixie Loves Dogs! Especially the small ones that she is at eye level with. Whenever we are at the park and there is a dog near by shes gets really excited, flaps her arms and then giggles when we go to pet it. However she doesn't have the "gentle petting" concept down yet and prefers to just grab little tufts of their fur. Poor little doggies. She especially loves it when they lick her face- it always sends her into a fit of giggles. note that i try not to let them lick her face, but dogs are unpredictable and i don't always see the lick coming. I should probably be more careful on this front.

Dixie Loves the baby bjorn that her daddy carries her in. I used to take her for short walks it it, but now that shes 20lbs shes just too heavy. But her dear daddy loves her so, so he does it anyways. When dixie sees sean pick up the bjorn shes gets super excited and flaps her arms about. She knows that it means a walk outside. She prefers the bjorn over the stroller any day of the week, i think bc she can see and feel everything.

Dixie Loves to eat. Whenever i am eating in front of her she gets really anxious and basically demands that i share with her. These days I usually give her a taste of whatever it is I'm eating. Just a small one... shes pretty much eating everything anyways! Its really fun to watch her "chew" little pieces of bread or oatmeal. There is a whole lot of tongue action moving the food around her mouth, and she kind of resembles a cow chewing grass. It makes me giggle.

Dixie loves to drink from her sippy cup and her mama's water bottles. Again, she demands a sip whenever i have one.

Dixie is a social butterfly. When strangers walk by she follows them until they make eye contact with her, and then she gives them her biggest gummiest smile possible often followed up by a little babble. I think it makes her a little confused when they dont look at her. Maybe a little sad too...

Dixie knows that the crib bumper is really meant to obstruct her view of her mummy and daddy when they open the nursery door to check on her. Yesterday when i went in to sneak a peak, there she was, hand on the bumper holding it down with her head perched up, waiting for one of us to come in! She caught us! so cute!

Dixie is an early bird. She wakes up at the butt crack of dawn, bright eyed and eager to play. This is not good news at 5:30am. I think i should suck it up and just take her out for a jog... but im just too tired. Plus she is still waking up at least once at night to eat, so i have yet to have a full nights sleep since pre pregnancy days. I'm sure if i listened to the sleep training books i've read and followed their counsel she'd probably stop this in a week. But i just cant bear to hear her cry. Yup, i've been caught in her trap.

ok, thats all for now. We love our sweet dixie mae :)