7 months!

Gabriel is 7 months old today! He's in the grabby stage now, where he just wants to get his hands on whatever he can - and then it goes straight into his mouth. He gets really frustrated when he sees something he wants - usually when he's on his tummy on the rug - and it's just out of reach. He can cover a lot of distance rolling but he just wants to crawl! He's got a few months to go before that, though, considering he's not sitting up on his own yet. But he pushes himself up on his arms, lifting his chest and sometimes even his tummy off the floor. He loves it when we hold him up on his feet and his legs seem very strong.

He's still little Mr. Social - he gets really happy when he sees people around and just stares at Valerie whatever she's doing. He's full of smiles and dimples and is perhaps cutest when he tucks his head into my shoulder and then peeks out with a smile at somebody. He's ticklish, too, and it's soooo much fun to make him laugh!

He likes food: he's eating avocado, pear, rice cereal, bananas, and I just added pureed carrots. I might try yoghurt next. A nice perk for me is that I can now eat a lot of things that used to bother him in the breastmilk - dairy (woohoo!), beans, broccoli, and chocolate! It's so nice to be able to have a slice when Terry orders pizza.

I think he's more right-hand dominant than Valerie was as a baby. His right hand is constantly moving, opening and closing all the time, and he always reaches for things with his right hand first. Whereas Valerie will still sometimes feed herself with her left hand, although she uses her right hand most of the time.

Today Gabriel took a 2-hour nap - hurray! He was really short on sleep this weekend thanks to his cold/cough, poor little dude. I'm really looking forward to the time when he'll be sleeping in longer stretches.

Love you, Little Doodly-Dude!