Lydia turned seven months old on the fifth of this month.  Happy birthday, my Sweet Girl!

The thing that stands out to me the most about the past month is how much Lydia seems to be learning every day.  We’ve discovered that Lydia is a lot happier if you don’t give her toys that she’s recently played with.  She quickly grows bored with them and wants something new to manipulate and explore.  Perhaps it is too early to tell, but I think she’s going to be very analytical (a scientist maybe?)

Lydia analyzes people too, especially Alethea.  She’s a little copy cat!  It’s almost scary just how much Lydia sounds like Alethea in the way she laughs and the silly little noises she makes.  Sometimes when my back is turned I can’t tell who is making a particular sound.  Undoubtedly there will be days to come when Alethea will be annoyed to have a shadow, but there can be no denying that Lydia’s motives are pure.  She thinks the sun rises and falls on Alethea’s command and wants so badly to be noticed by her.  It’s gotten to the point that I’m having a hard time teaching Alethea to play gently with her sister because even when she smacks Lydia with a toy, she’ll receive an adoring smile that says, “Wow, my sister is paying attention to me!  So cool!”

Although she is not the least bit assertive with Alethea, she is becoming increasingly more so with everyone else.  Currently she is very interested in feeding herself finger foods, will not ever drink out of a bottle under any circumstances, hates to be put down for a nap if she hasn’t been recently fed and is positively insulted if you offer her a nuk when she’s crying.

She sits up for longer and longer periods each day and no, she isn’t crawling yet, but she’s gotten to be quite a pro at rolling, pivoting and stretching, so that she can generally reach anything in a two food radius around her when she’s on her tummy.

She still doesn’t have much hair and even though she acts like a little beaver, chewing on everything in sight, there is no sign yet of any teeth poking through.  Despite the fact that she is almost certainly teething, she takes two solid naps a day and sleeps reasonably well at night.  Hurray!

The highlight of Lydia’s social calendar this past month was that she got to meet all three of her living great grandparents.  Naturally, they thought she was as delightful as the rest of us do!

Keep growing and learning, Lydia Grace!  We just can’t get enough of you, our happy, assertive, analytical little girl!