Seven months!

Carmela's sixth month went by in a flash of finals (for Mom), Chanukah, Zoo Lights, and spending time with Nana and Grandpa, and *still* we have no tooth! Ela is 7 months old today. Will she get her tooth this month? Impossible to say — we're guessing it's pretty likely, but Mom and Dad are beyond worrying about it and just hope it doesn't give her too much trouble when it does decide to poke its pointy head through her gums.

Carmela is the happiest baby. She's learning so much, and we enjoy watching her explore her world — it seems like she figures out something new every day. She still makes her Wookie sound a lot, but less than she was. She seems to like modulating her voice now — making LOUD, LOUD noises and SHREAKING at the top of her lungs, then ((whispering)) ba-ba-ba, pa-pa-pa, ba-ba-ba really ((quietly)). She also seems to enjoy sitting in her Bumbo seat for "dinner." She's still too little to associate hunger with her banana-plum-brown rice puree, but she seems to enjoy sitting at the table with a spoon and a shot glass (which, honestly, sounds like the saddest dinner in America, and one that I'm sure a lot of out-of-work journalists enjoy nightly). Every now and then she'll suffer through a bite of food, then bang on her tray with her spoon and throw her shot glass on the floor. It's good fun. :) So far, she's tried rice cereal and oat cereal, prunes, bananas, carrots, winter squash, and the banana-plum-brown rice puree. She makes all kinds of yuck face no matter what she gets, but she keeps coming back for more winter squash and cereal, so we're assuming it's less that she doesn't like the new food, and more that it's a total assault on her palate.

It appears she's beginning to form attachments to things, and gets angry and cries if she can't have them. Dad's glasses, for example, are a point of fascination, and she likes to yank them off this head and wave them around. If he takes them away, her little face wrinkles up and her eyes fill up with tears. Same with her spoon at dinner — if Mom takes it away, she opens her mouth to wail, and arches her back to show her frustration. I'm sure this will be endlessly irritating later, but right now we're enjoying the fact that she can communicate so well with us.

Carmela also is figuring out leverage and pulling up; it won't be long before she's standing herself up in her bed and working on cruising. She likes to hold onto the edges of her bassinet and bounce on her butt — we suspect she'll soon figure out that she can go from bouncing over and over on her butt to bouncing herself up onto her knees and feet, from which she'll be able to stand. Her legs are quite strong, and as long as she can keep her balance by holding onto something, she'll probably do alright cruising along the furniture. In response, Mom and Dad picked out a brand new crib, and we've been working on cleaning out the office/guest room to turn it into Carmela's room. (This hopefully will be finished by the end of Christmas break, as Mom has to go back to school, and then will have to take the bar, and then will have to get a job.) Hopefully, Carmela won't be able to crawl out of her new crib, but we got one that converts into a junior bed, just in case she's anything like her Dad.

Carmela's favorite toys right now are her blocks, which Nana and Grandpa saved from when her Dad and Uncle Jason were little; the box that her blocks live in; her fold-out grocery cart mat from GG in Maryland; an empty oatmeal container (which rolls on the floor, and also acts like a drum); an empty, sealed Tupperware bowl; her Bun-Bun (from Gail in Berkeley); her Bear (from Bizzy, Patrick, and Michael in Maryland); tags (which she'd rather play with than just about anything else); her teething fish, Miguel and Arbul (I held them up to her and those are the sounds she made ... "Miguel" might actual be "McGill," which would be very clever, as he is a fish ... ); and her toes. She's also fond of tearing up magazines with her hands and her feet. She still loves going places with her Mom and Dad, and we take her all over town. This past month she's been to Zoo Lights, to sushi dinner (where she was a big hit with the staff), to brunch a couple of times, to Target — she even got to see a big police response at Sears, but when all the officers started pulling their rifles and cocking their guns and telling people to get in their cars and leave, Mom got scared and hustled her into her car seat.

So life's been pretty exciting this past month, and we'll just see what excitement 7 months has in store. Here's cheering for that tooth! Go, go Incisor!!