Danica is so close to crawling! We've been coaxing her up onto her knees while she's been on her belly. Today was the first time we saw her really try it herself. She's still more familiar with using her hands to propel her than her knees, so she went backwards instead of forwards! Here's what it looked like:

 

 
Video: Danica's first backward shuffle 

Over the past couple of weeks, Danica's become pretty good at holding her own bottle. She grabs it with one hand or two, drinks, takes it out of her mouth to take a breath, and drinks again. Eventually she waves the bottle around, bangs it on the ground, and throws it away from her, too. Now she's getting a chance to feed herself solid foods, too! She started with a few water crackers today. Not much ended up in her tummy, but she enjoyed gumming them until they started to dissolve. She cracked us up with her "umm umm mmm" sounds as she munched. Here's a video!

 

For the moment, Danica's nickname is "Scooter". Perhaps she's imitating a toy whale that she got in Michigan, which uses vibration to scoot along the floor. Certainly it's a precursor to crawling: while sitting, she bounces up and down and rocks forward, enabling her to scoot an inch or two - even more on the smooth floor. She's perfectly fine now with keeping upright with her hands on the floor in front of her. She just hasn't figured out yet how to get up on her knees for crawling.

 

Danica has also moved on to a new sound! The la la la has turned into a great approximation of dada. Sure, she doesn't mean it as a word, but it melts me anyways. Especially the clear one at the end of this video:

 

Danica's favorite crib friend is her little teddy bear, whom she clutches many times while she naps. Today, though, she put the orange pillow cat that her Grammy made through its paces. The poor cat's ear and tail may never be the same! Danica is clearly right at the end of the time for the crib at its upper setting, as she is able to grab onto the top railing now when she's sitting up. We'll have to move the mattress to the lower setting. Here she is playing with the pillow cat!

 

Mid-August - Danica's gained a lot more control. She can sit on her own for long stretches, and she's really active at reaching out for stuff, picking it up, waving it around, drumming, etc. While on the airplane a week ago, we discovered (by accident) that she totally loves playing with a small, closed potato chip bag. It's crinkly, it makes noise when she waves it around, she can get the corners in her mouth, and it's colorful. Instant toy! Here's a video of her having fun with some Ruffles.

 

Mid-July - Danica's discovering how to control her tongue. She keeps curling it into a U and going "la-la-la". She's also gumming everything that she can get in her mouth. Here's a quick video of her combining the two - gumming her own tongue as she practices the "la"s. Careful of your ears, she gets a little loud in the middle of this one.

 

  
Video: Danica la-la-las

Early in July - the first time I tried bouncing the rubber gym ball and the big exercise ball in front of Danica, she got wide-eyed and seemed scared of it. However, that quickly changed, and she started laughing at the percussion of it. As with anything that gets a hearty laugh out of her, we were soon addicted and couldn't stop bouncing the balls! Here's a video of the scene - Danica's laughter started to die down by the time we picked up the camera, but you can still hear her a couple of times.

 

  

Danica has gotten her first taste of solid food over the past two days. And ... she likes it! Kim's fed her a bit of rice cereal so far and it's brought back the piranha in Danica. She leans into the spoon and tries to lick the bowl, and blows bubbles with the cereal she doesn't eat.

 

Here's a video clip: