Elizabeth's first (formal) swimming lesson

Elizabeth had her first swimming lesson a week ago.  She doesn't mind the water, but we wouldn't call her a natural.  She blew some bubbles and chased a rubber duck for a little while. 

Sleep Elizabeth Sleep

Our nightly goal this month is to get the child pictured to the left turn into the child pictured on the right.  Just as others have, we (Ali) have tried multiple approaches but thus far to no avail.  She routinely wakes several times nightly and often has extended crying episodes.  Ali is the humanitarian in this family, so she has been hesitant to give the crying-it-out method (also known as Faber method) a try.  Essentially, this involves pre-set intervals of crying time allowed after the baby is put to bed.  So, if she goes to bed at 7 pm, we would let her cry 5 minutes in the crib, then come in for a minute or two to calm her, repeat again for 5 minutes, then again for 10 minutes and so on until she falls asleep.  Of course, Ali was very anxious about this approach, but it turned out to work wonders.  The first night she whined on and off for 40 minutes prior to falling asleep in her crib and then woke just twice (a record!) during the night, requiring attention only once.  The second night was better and she was asleep within 10 minutes of the put-down.  She now sleeps basically uninterrupted for 12 hours!!!!!  And no-one is more thankful that Ali!

Child play circa 7-9 months

Ross and Elizabeth's first play date was a confetti party, courtesy of Self magazine.

Elizabeth's first crawl - Babushka Zhenya taught her

This week was monumental for Elizabeth. First, Inna taught her how to wave good-bye; unfortunately we could not get this on-tape. However, later in the week she was visiting babushka Zhenya, whose house has a perfect rug formation and this is what happened....