We thought should we bring the baby?  To the beach?  She is so little and might hate it.....oh no she loved it!!  We went to Hollywood Beach Florida with our good friends Julie (Waving Coach) and Barb (Brahbrah) and had a blast! Elizabeth could not have been more fun or had more fun!  The weather was not always on our side but that just gave us more time to eat :)

enjoy!

Elizabeth playing hide-n-seek

A little dinner theatre.... She loves being scared so this game always gets a laugh! Elizabeth is starting to  figure out papa's big trick!  She will play this game all day, be it in her chair, between rooms or behind furniture :)   It has become a lot more funny since she went ahead and grew some teeth.

Elizabeth on candid camera

This is pretty much a typical part of our morning. I keep Elizabeth busy with food and then untangle the barking, annoying mutt from under the porch.  I often wondered what she did or babbled while I was gone.  As most know she is a mama's girl and does not like to be away from me for any amount of time. I set the video camera up and watched from a small outside kitchen window, where she could not see me.  This is what happens......

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....