Seven months already!

For those of you keeping score at home, tonight (a week after her 7-month birthday), Katie measured about 28 inches and 17 lbs, 13 oz. Katie is getting the hang of solid food; she likes sweet potatoes, pears and peaches and doesn't care for rice cereal, squash or peas. Next up, bananas!

Now, on to her most recent pictures. No, this isn't an Olan Mills pose; Katie just naturally likes to clasp her hands together. Sriyesh's dad gets a huge kick out of it, as do her daycare teachers. She may look sweet, but the two-handed approach is especially useful for clubbing things.

It probably drives Anne's mom nuts to see Katie barefoot in all these pictures, but we just can't keep shoes and socks on her! She already was a master at rubbing her feet together to get them off, and now she can just reach down and pull them off with her hands.

We have blocks at home that do all sorts of neat things, but these simple wooden blocks were real winners!

Katie is our happy girl!

Click below for more photos from Katie's seven-month photo shoot.

Katie's 7-Month Photo Shoot

Katie meets Caroline ... again

Katie and Caroline Conner met for the first time in October, when Katie was seven weeks old and Caroline was just three weeks. Disappointingly, both slept the whole time.

On Saturday, a beautiful spring day in NC, we re-introduced the girls on a lunch date. The results were much more exciting.

Katie was pleased to catch her first glimpse of her future college roommate. (Anne and Caroline's mom, Emily, lived together for two years at UNC.)

Caroline was pretty happy with the idea, too.

Finally, Katie showed off her sun hat.

Click below for more pictures of Katie and Caroline's lunch date.

Katie with Caroline

Katie's old friends

Katie is doing a great job sitting up and playing, but until recently she spent a lot of time with her old friends the jiggly seat, exersaucer, activity mat and swing. She still enjoys them, but she'd prefer to be sitting on her own and playing with new, smaller toys.

We wanted to share a few photos with her favorite toys for posterity.

Here's Katie with her activity mat. She almost immediately rolls onto her tummy now when we put her down onto it; when she does, she enjoys smiling at the baby in the mirror. (Simon, our terrier, covets the purple elephant you can see on the mat. It won't stay attached, so he thinks it's fair game. Hmmm ... We haven't seen it recently.)

Katie has enjoyed her jiggly chair almost since the beginning. After we added the lion (yellow, far right), it became her jingly chair, too. When she starts butterfly kicking, she can really get it bouncing.

Here's Katie with her exersaucer, shortly after Christmas. It has been amazing watching how quickly she has learned new skills to manipulate the various toys, and she still has a lot of room to grow with this one.

Finally, Katie has an on-again, off-again relationship with the swing. It helped her sleep when she was a tiny baby, then she ignored it until she was reintroduced to the idea at day care. Now she likes it, especially since we added a toy that plays Caribbean-style music.

Click below for more photos from Katie at five months.

Katie at five months