Seven months old

Maija is very sneakily getting bigger. It's hard to believe she is seven months old already. We weighed and measured her for the first time in a while today: 98th percentile for height and 40th percentile for weight. Still tall and thin for her age, and eating like crazy. She can demolish a huge bowl of solid food, and even cries for the split second between spoonfuls when she isn't actually receiving more food.

She loves the baby swing at the park!

And actually, Anja still does too.

Now that Maija is eating a lot more solid food and no longer nurses EVERY minute of the day, I can actually leave the house without her sometimes. On one of those occasions, Anja and I went on a short hike in the park at the edge of town recently. The hike was really just to the top of a large-ish hill overlooking Petaluma, but a good little trek for Anja, and I love that she calls it a hike. I told her we would look for salamanders since it was so wet lately, but it turned out to be way too cold for them to be out. We did see a hunting kestrel, and one hummingbird, which was good enough for her. And later the next week Anja asked me if I remembered when we saw the kestral on that hike.

Anja really loves dancing lately. Dancing mostly means walking in a circle with exaggerated slow movements to music, but it's really fun for her.

I think it's funny that Maija never really understood the concept of a pacifier. We bought every brand, style and size pacifier when she was a month old and I was so desperate for a break, but she hated them all. Even now, she seems to think, "I ought to like this, but I just don't." At least now we don't have to worry about weaning her from it later.

A nice photo of Anja and me from my 365 Day Project - a self portrait per day for a year.

We went to Fisherman's Wharf this past weekend to visit the aquarium where we have a membership. It expires soon, and I think we may instead get a membership to Cal Academy this time (which actually has a bigger aquarium than this, although I will miss these gigantic underwater tunnels). Maija loved the jellies, they're my favorite too:

Awesome.

Anja built this great playdoh boat for her guys to ride in. They are on their way to the aquarium to see "fish and dinosaurs and sheep."

And from Anja:

Anja: (as Maija grabs her) NO! I'm not a very good baby toy!

Anja: (looking at the toilet paper roll that had been unrolled and then rolled back up) Who did that? Was it me?

Me: It's going to be cold outside today and a little bit rainy.

Anja: But we can still go outside. It's going to be dry outside today, is that okay?

Me: Tonight is a movie night. What movie should we watch?

Anja: How to Train Your Dragon! But we don't usually train dragons, that's just a funny joke.

Anja: Let's both be Night Furies! (crawls around on all fours)

Me: And Maija can be a Gronkle.

Anja: And Daddy and Auntie Heather can both be Deadly Nadders. We are all dragons in this house!

Me: When I was a little girl, I had those books too.

Anja: When you were a little girl? And then what happened, when you were a little girl?

Me: I grew up, and now I'm big. And some day you will be big too.

Anja: I will grow up. I want to be just like you guys.

Me: Sure, you can grow up just like us.

Anja: And then what can I be?

Me: Well, you can be anything you want. You can even be a mommy like me, if you want.

Anja: I want to be a spinosaurus.

Me: Okay, you can be a spinosaurus.