Lauren is scooting, sitting and almost crawling!

It is hard to believe that Lauren is already 7.5 months old. In the past two weeks, she has developed several new, exciting skills! She is pretty mobile now. She is so close to crawling, but it's more of a scoot at the moment. Still, she can make her way across the room. She also figured out how to go from being on her tummy to sitting up. She has good balance. We usually try to spot her just in case, but she rarely falls over. She loves being on her tummy and is constantly trying to roll over if we place her on her back. It makes changing her diaper very challenging. At this point, I've figured out how to get her dressed while she stays on her tummy.

Another new development is that Lauren clearly has developed a strong trust in those individuals she recognizes and she is wary of strangers. I think she has developed separation anxiety, which is supposed to happen around 9 months, but I think it's here early. Around Dan, Barbara, Annamaria and me, Lauren is happy as a clam. She also clearly recognizes Oma and Poppa and is fine with them holding and playing with her. But if she is left with anyone unfamiliar, or if someone she doesn't know holds her, she gets a really scared, sad look on her face and bursts into tears a few seconds later. Last Friday I had a conference call I had to take, so I hired a new sitter to watch Lauren for a couple hours at our home. I had the sitter arrive an hour before my call started so we could all spend time together and let Lauren know this woman was okay. As soon as I left the room to prepare for my call, Lauren burst into hysterics and screamed for over an hour. It was so awful and I felt terrible - for Lauren, for the sitter, and me! I tried to finish that call as fast as possible and I paid the sitter double since she was so patient and kind to Lauren while she screamed her head off for such a long time!

We have also discovered that Lauren is sensitive. She is a sympathy crier. A few times in the past month, we have been someplace where another child started crying. Lauren will look around to see who is upset and then she will start crying too. It's not a terrible "I'm-so-upset" cry, it's more of a half-cry if that makes sense. She usually gets over it really fast because we tell her everything is fine, and obviously she is fine and there is nothing to cry about so she stops. But it is funny to watch her react to other kids.

Last week, Lauren started weekly play dates with Lydia's son John. John and his nanny Sabrina have been coming over once a week to play with Lauren and Barbara in our downstairs playroom. I'm glad the babies and nannies are able to socialize. Lauren really loves being around other babies, so I think this is really good for her. We have also been going to a weekly music class, Wiggleworms, that I think she enjoys. There are about 10 babies and parents in the class and Lauren usually has a very serious face the entire time, so it's hard to know what she thinks about it, but we'll keep going through the end of the year since I think it's fun and good experience.

Below are a few photos taken in the past two weeks. You can see Lauren's newest toy is my old laptop (the hard drive completely died, so she just sees a blue screen when it's turned on, but it's her very own computer!).