Happy 7-months to Quinn!

....and I still can't believe I even have a baby. Haha! I wonder when that feeling goes away. Does it ever? It's an exciting/anxiousness/terrifying/incredible feeling that I am not sure I will ever get used to or be able to explain. I am having so much fun with her though. Her sixth month was one of my favorites so far. In just four short weeks she has developed so drastically and has turned into her own little person. A customer told me the other day that she sees qualities in her six year old's personality that were there when her child was an infant. Distinct only to her. So I am looking at all of the tiny things that Quinn does in a new light, embracing them and jotting them down so I can look back in six years to see if they were there in her early days.

Quinn has a charasmatic smile that is unique only to her. It is a crooked, open-mouthed, gumless smile that she beams always when I tend to be concentrating on something intently, like changing her diaper or struggling to get her noodley arm through a sleeve when we are running late to be somewhere. She looks up at me with her big doe eyes and makes that goofy smile. My intense focus suddenly turns into gushy loviness and I can never help but laugh right back at her. The same thing happens at night when we are doing our nightly bed-time routine. I fight to keep her in a swaddle. As soon as I get one arm locked in and am working on holding down the other one while I wrap her up like a burrito, she pushes with all of her might and breaks open the swaddle with full force. She then immediately flips onto her stomach, looks at me with that goofy smile and starts cooing, as if she wasn't just rubbing her eyes and crying moments earlier. As frustrating as this can be (especially after it happens six or seven times at three in the morning), I laugh every time. Often times, I laugh while I cry (out of exhaustion) but she knows how to get to me and it is so funny and new. It's like she does it on purpose when she knows I am about to reach my most fragile point. This goofy, pink gummy smile. I love it.

At seven months, Quinn does what Mike calls "The Italian Lady", where she jabbers loudly making loud "AYAYAYAYA" sounds while she flails her arms about and blows rasberries, usually smacking some kind of plastic object against something hard.

She can sit in a high-chair at restaurants and loves being a part of our dinner time. She is really interested in eating and wants to try everything we are munching on. She stuck a bread stick in her mouth at Olive Garden the other night, haha. She is so well-behaved and loves people watching. She was flirting with some guys in business suits sitting behind us a few nights ago. She kept opening and closing her mouth at them as if she was silently saying "mama" over and over again. We couldn't make her stop!

There are so many things that blow me away every day. I wish I could be here to spend more time with her. Until that day comes, I am enjoying every moment I have with her. Here are a few videos of two huge six month accomplishments!