7 months

February 1st was Graham's 7 month birthday!  He's such a happy little camper (most of the time), that it's hard for me to pick out my favorite pictures - I love them all - even the grouchier ones.  So, here are as few as I could narrow myself down to (even though I realize that this is still excessive). 

Before the pictures, here are a couple other things that I want to remember about this time:

• Graham weighs 21 pounds, 1 ounce (that's about the 80th percentile).  He's shrinking in percentiles.  I don't know if it's because we are weaning the breastmilk and his bottles are mostly all formula,  because we went from 5 bottles down to 4, because he's eating more solid food (although I still ration it because I swear he'd eat all day...hmmm...maybe he's hungry...opps), because all babies just HAVE to slow down on their weight gain at some point, or if he's just evening out to be more true to his body type.  I am trying not to let it concern me because he still has some meat on his bones and he's a happy camper, but it's hard not to want to overfeed him just to keep him fat :)  I seem to be the only mom who's utterly confused about how much to feed my child and when.  I can't really take his clues or I'd be feeding him all day, so it's hard to know what that right amount is.  Maybe this should be making me realize that I'm underfeeding him...hmmm...I'll think about that.
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• Graham has two more teeth!  I found them on my birthday though, they were definitely through the gums already, and one was bigger than the other, so who knows when they actually broke through (bad mom).  They're the two teeth on either side of where his middle teeth will eventually grow in.  Ha.  It's going to crack me up when he has two middle bottom teeth and they're flanked on the top by teeth, but his middle top teeth aren't yet in.  Who followed THAT!?  Anyway, it's cute and seems so big!  How does he already have 4 teeth?
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• Graham has started blowing major spit bubbles and making a funny noise lately.  He's been playing with his teeth for the last couple of weeks by tucking his bottom lip into his mouth and kinda sucking on it.  Now, he does that while blowing out air/spit and it highly amuses him.  It's pretty cute.
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• Building on the above interest of the week, he's taken to doing the same thing on my cheek.  He gives really big, open mouth, slobbery "kisses" on my cheeks anyway, but now he's doing that while blowing air and making raspberry sounds on my cheek.  It makes me laugh out loud, which then makes him look at me and start laughing.  It's the cutest thing on the planet and I could literally spend my whole day getting covered in slobber just to repeat this over and over.
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• We went to our first Kindermusik class last week with Meggan and Joseph.  It was fun and definitely a much better experience than my MOPS experience the week before (I'll have to blog about that one!). 
• Graham was pretty much the same there as he is in any group...he just kinda sits back and takes it all in.  He observes a lot of what's going on (normally with BIG eyes), but he's stingy on the smiles and interaction until things slow down and get to be more one-on-one.  Mark and I notice that he's like this at family things and playdates too.  I think anything is just "more" than what he's used to on a daily basis, so he just wants to watch and see what's going on.  I'm interested to see if he ends up being shy, or just observant, or if this is just a stay-at-home-with-a-homebody-mommy type of behavior.
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• Graham smiles really big at Mark when he comes home now.  For about a week, Mark came home as Graham was eating dinner every night.  He would get big eyes when the alarm beeped with Mark opening the door, he'd turn his head to stare at the kitchen door, and then smile really big when he saw Mark.  It was so cute and I'm happy that he knows who his daddy is!  ha! 
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• Graham still loves to hold his own spoon when I'm feeding him.  I just put food on the spoon and most of the time he grabs it from me and sucks on the spoon until the food's gone, he drops it on the tray, I fill it back up and we go on like this through most of the feeding.  That is, unless he's really hungry and he's crying between bites until I can shovel it in his mouth fast enough that he is momentarily satiated, and then he'll relax enough to grab for his own spoon.
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• Poor kiddo still only eats the basics, but I'm trying to expand his diet.  So far he's eaten: rice cereal, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, pears, peas, green beans, squash, carrots, apples, bananas, prunes, avocado, puffs, cheerios, and teething biscuits.  I'm psycho and actually follow the wait 2-4 days before introducing new foods rule because I'm petrified that Graham is going to be allergic to something and will go into anaphylactic shock.  Not that waiting for days between foods is going to help avoid THAT scenario, but whatever.
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• Graham's post bath routine is hilarious - I have a video that I'll have to post, but this little one LOVES to play with his towel and his daddy makes him laugh harder than anyone else at this game.  So, I'll post that soon.
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• I read a book or two to Graham before each nap and before bed.  I LOVE how he snuggles into me to listen to the books.  He'll normally only do it for about 5 seconds before he is up and trying to hold the book himself (which is also adorable), but those few seconds are precious.

Ok, enough babbling.  Here are the pictures (as if 97% of you didn't just scroll past all of my rambling to the pictures anyway...including my husband who admits that he is only interested in pictures on my blog.)

Here are a few "out-takes".  Look at the one on the top right - I mean, it's borderline crazy, but I love it!!

And these would be a good example of what Graham wanted to do the whole time: eat his 7 month label.  He loved the crinkle sound and just realized that he could wad it up and shove it in his mouth - how he lasted 6 other photo shoots like this without realizing that, I'm not sure.