Solids, Liquids and lots of Gas

Piper doesn't like her solid food.  Well, let me back up.  She kind of likes solid foods.  On some days.  At first, she loved the whole concept and ate impressively well.  Now, it's a crap shoot.  It gets my hopes up, one day thinking she's into the sweet potatoes (hooray! this is working!) and the next day witnessing a fuss a la Veruca Salt, and the next day after that, waiting with the spoon while the excitement of "smearing designs into the highchair tray" wears off.  I like smearing designs into the highchair tray just as much as the next person, but I like food more.  We assume that eventually she'll get used to the tastes and textures, and hopefully start to look forward to the squash and cereal, not just the thrill of sitting up high enough to see what we're doing on the stove and countertops (excitement pictured below)..

So THAT'S what you guys do up here! This is AWESOME! Now get me something to chew on!

Much better.

Which brings me to teething..  No tooth in sight yet, but all the systems are a-go (whatever that means). Piper tries to put items larger than her head all the way into her mouth to gnaw on them, and inevitably gets frustrated that they don't fit.  It's funny to watch (see below).

Perhaps if I turn it around, flip it over,  and tilt it the other way.. 

We continue to notice her contentment being outdoors.  San Antonio is beautiful, and not yet 100 degrees, so we are outside often. She's incredibly observant, and will stop any activity to turn her attention to a bird in the yard or a passerby.  Overall, she's a playful and talkative little person, but spends many moments throughout the day studying situations in a surprisingly quiet focus.

What up, birds?

What up, flowers?

In motion news, Piper sits up 95% on her own, gets into crawling position, and has mastered a form of scooting that gets her from one end of the blanket to the other, though unfortunately she scoots on her face.  Ahh, we love her.  Here are some random photos:

Red block, prepare to be slobbered!

Oh, Mom.

Dad chat!

Had an awesome visit with Nonna last week! 

Soooo, we found out that Piper is extremely photogenic.

Oh, come ON!

A Very Merry Half-Birthday

Piper is 6 months old! She has been with us for a whole half of a year, a half whole year, a half year, wholly! Whoa! Pretty unbelievable how much she has changed (or totally believable, because that's what babies do). I swear she looks different in photos from last week, so it really blows my mind to look back at photos from her first week, like this one:

And from her first 24 hours:

She was so tiny and slow and delicate. And currently she is adventurous and wiggly and slobbery and doing stuff like this:

These days she entertains herself with massive amounts of gurgling, spitting, toe-grabbing, toy-shaking, toy-eating, ninja rolling, and bird/cat/dog/people/car watching. She also loves pulling glasses off of mommy and daddy's faces, sipping cold water from mommy's glass, and licking pieces of apple. And she loves chanting this:

And she looks ravishing in her sunhat.

In closing, here are some photos from last Saturday (it was cold and rainy, so acrobatics in the den seemed like a great way to pass the time).