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

Celebrating Six Months

It's amazing how quickly time flies, but Katie celebrated her six-month birthday today with a nice, long nap and some runny sweet potatoes. Her stats today: 17 lbs, 4 oz. and 27.25 inches.

The past month has been a tremendous one for Katie's development. First, she learned her name and how to roll from her back to her stomach like a pro (even in her sleep). She hasn't mastered the other direction yet, so she spends lots of time on her tummy.

More recently, she has learned to sit up unassisted for short periods. She's getting better at it every day!

Look Mom, no hands!

Click below to see more from Katie's six-month photo shoot.

Katie's 6-Month Photo Shoot

Our Funny Valentine

We made our monthly trek out to King of Prussia today for the next installment in Katie's portraits.

In honor of the upcoming holiday, Katie wore pink in her pictures for the first time. Her first outfit was an adorable dress that Darwa (her great-grandmother) gave her for Christmas. We're glad to record it for posterity, because she's growing so quickly she's almost into the next size. On her five-month birthday yesterday, Katie was 26.4 inches long and weighed 15 lbs, 10.5 oz.

It's been freezing here (19 was the high yesterday; I think it got up to 21 today), so we decided Katie needed a cute warm hat.

Finally, she got comfy in her frog sleeper.

Katie's First Christmas

December was a blur of celebrations for our family. Early in the month, we decorated our tree and Katie helped Sriyesh put the angel on top.

Then we headed down to Florida to celebrate with Anne's parents. We had a great time, and Katie was able to meet many of Nana's friends at her annual cookie exchange. She even had her own seat at the party.

The next stop was Shelby, where we celebrated with the new great-grandmother. We went to see Santa, who made an early visit to Darwa's house.

Katie enjoyed playing with her new toys...

...and also the wrapping paper.

We finished off the holiday week in Eden with Sriyesh's family, including a great party on Christmas Day with friends in Greensboro.

Happy New Year, everybody!

Click on the photo below for more Christmas pics.

Katie's First Christmas

Katie's four-month pictures

As happens when kids are in day care, Katie has spent much of the past month sick -- first with a cold, then with an ear infection. She's feeling much better, but now we think she's teething. All that to say, it's been hard to find a time when she felt good enough for her four-month pictures.

But we persevered and think we got some cute ones.

To give these photos some scale, at Katie's four-month checkup, she weighed in at 13 lbs, 8.5 oz (around the 50th percentile) and measured 25.75 inches (the 94th percentile). We don't know where she's getting this height (maybe from Anne's dad), but if she keeps it up, she'll be taller than Anne by middle school!

As we mentioned in the last post, Katie has started using her hands more. She really enjoyed grabbing her Christmas dress.

She also loves removing her socks!

A bunch of firsts

Katie is becoming ever more aware of the world around her. She watches people walk across the room now and smiles when she recognizes them. She's even rolling over -- almost. She can make it from her back to her tummy with the exception of one arm that gets pinned underneath.

Katie also has gotten much better at using her hands. She's started touching our faces and grabbing our clothes, but it also means she's starting to play with toys. She loves touching books when we read, banging on her inchworm to make it crackle, grabbing the toys on her bouncy seat and clasping her hands in front of her.

She also enjoyed the sounds she could make on the bag of yummy Amish kettlecorn we bought on a trip to Hershey in November.

On that same trip, Katie laughed for the first time! She has a wonderful throaty little giggle. It was hard to replicate at first, but now she laughs frequently, especially when we make funny faces at her on the changing table.

Katie also experienced her first snow in November. The dogs enjoyed checking her out in her snowsuit. As you can tell, she's enjoying the new attention.

Katie enjoyed having Thatha, Achi and Uncle Priyesh visit for her first Thanksgiving. She showed off her skill at hitting the toys on her activity mat and enjoyed some good cuddle time.

Finally, Katie took in her first Carolina basketball game on December 28. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any baby-sized blue hair!

Click below for more recent pictures of Katie.

Katie 3-5 Months

Three-month portraits

As promised, we're trying to take portraits of Katie every month. This time, we made our way to Cherry Hill, N.J., so that the same photographer who took her terrific two-month pictures could do it again. (He was in King of Prussia last month.)

Two outfits and a cute hoodie later, we had some real keepers:

Stay tuned for month 4!